/  7 


LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS 

AT  URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 

IN  MEMORY  OF 

STEWART  §.  HOWE 

JOURNALISM  CLASS  OF  1928 


STEWART  S.  HOWE  FOUNDATION 

977 
H79S 
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A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VAL- 
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From  an  original,  unretouched  negative,  made  in  1864,  at  the 
time  the  President  commissioned  Ulysses  Grant  Lieutenant- 
General  and  Commander  of  all  the  armies  of  the  Republic.  It 
is  said  that  this  negative,  with  that  of  General  Grant  (see  page 
200),  was  made  in  commemoration  of  that  event. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY 

OF  THE 

MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 


BY 


JAMES  K.  HOSMER,  Ph.D.,LL.D. 

MEMBER  OF  THE  MINNESOTA  HISTORICAL,  SOCIETY,  AUTHOR 

OF  BIOGRAPHIES  OF  YOUNG  SIR  HENRY  VANE, 

SAMUEL  ADAMS,  AND  THOMAS 

HUTCHINSON,  ETC. 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND   COMPANY 


1902 


COPYRIGHT,   igoi,   JAMES  K.  HOSMER 
ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  November,  igoz 


977 


To  his  friends 

THE  DIRECTORS  OF  THE  MINNEAPOLIS  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 
This  book,  based  on  materials  obtained  in  their  col- 
lection, and  intended  primarily  for  the 

public  whom  we  serve, 
Is  RESPECTFULLY  DEDICATED  BY 

Their  most  obedient 
THE    LIBRARIAN 


PREFACE 

THE  centenary  of  the  Louisiana  purchase,  now 
close  at  hand,  about  to  be  commemorated  by  the 
St.  Louis  Exposition,  is  turning  the  thoughts  of 
men  to  the  region  in  which  lies  the  heart  of 
the  Union.  At  the  present  moment,  too,  the 
Mississippi  Valley  is  about  to  become,  so  to 
speak,  politically  complete.  Oklahoma  possesses 
every  requisite  for  statehood ;  and  will,  so  says 
report,  probably  with  the  Indian  Territory  make 
application  for  admission  as  a  State  at  the  next 
session  of  Congress.  Should  the  application  be 
granted,  the  last  unorganized  fragment  of  the 
area  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  will  receive  a 
formal  constitution.  Such  an  event  marks  an 
epoch.  In  view  of  these  circumstances,  it  is 
hoped  that  this  little  book  may  seem  timely  and 
prove  useful. 

The  writer  believes  that  his  best  qualification 
for  the  task  he  has  undertaken  lies  in  the  fact 
that  he  has  spent  most  of  his  life  in  the  Missis- 


vi  PREFACE 

sippi  Valley  or  close  upon  its  border,  and  has  his 
memory  charged  with  what  has  happened  there 
during  the  lapse  of  nearly  two  generations,  from 
the  administration  of  Van  Buren  to  that  of 
Roosevelt.  He  has  traversed  the  basin  from  the 
mouth  of  the  river  to  northern  Minnesota,  —  from 
the  head-springs  of  the  Ohio  on  the  east  to  the 
head-springs  of  the  Missouri  on  the  west.  He 
has  dwelt  on  the  main  stream,  on  its  most  impor- 
tant affluents,  and  on  some  of  its  smaller  tribu- 
taries. He  has  had  some  experience  of  the 
aboriginal  peoples,  as  well  as  of  the  race  which 
has  displaced  them.  He  has  been  cognizant 
not  only  of  the  peaceful  development,  but  has 
marched  over  a  portion  of  its  area  rifle  on  shoulder, 
and  had  some  hand  in  loosing  the  Confederate 
clutch  which  sought  to  close  the  river  to  the 
Union.  He  may  claim  to  have  had  good  opportu- 
nity to  absorb  all  that  may  come  to  a  historian 
through  long  and  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
country  he  sets  out  to  describe. 

The  literature  of  the  subject  is,  of  course,  of 
vast  amount,  and  the  writer  has  had  close  at 
hand  during  the  preparation  of  his  work  a  good 
proportion  of  that  literature.  To  enumerate  the 
authorities  whom  he  has  consulted,  more  or  less 


PREFACE  vii 

thoroughly,  would  take  long ;  but  a  few  works 
may  be  mentioned  upon  which  especial  depend- 
ence has  been  placed.  For  the  few  geological  ref- 
erences, Geikie's  "  Great  Ice  Age  "  and  Kussell's 
"Rivers  of  North  America"  have  been  helpful; 
for  the  Indians,  Lewis  H.  Morgan's  "  Houses  and 
House  Life  of  the  American  Aborigines,"  and 
the  monumental  "  Relations  des  Jesuites,"  as 
edited  by  Mr.  R.  G.  Thwaites  ;  for  the  early  ex- 
plorations, besides  Parkman's  histories,  the  narra- 
tives of  Hennepin,  Carver,  Lewis  and  Clark,  and 
Zebulon  M.  Pike  ;  for  the  Louisiana  purchase,  the 
works  of  Barbe-Marbois,  Binger  Herman,  and 
the  Memoirs  of  Lucien  Bonaparte ;  for  the  time 
of  the  Rebellion,  "  The  Battles  and  Leaders  of 
the  Civil  War."  As  to  the  general  development 
of  the  Valley,  the  story  has  been  followed  as  told 
by  Bancroft,  Henry  Adams,  McMaster,  and 
Rhodes.  Of  the  great  men  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley,  numerous  biographies  have  been  con- 
sulted, of  especial  value  being  those  of  the 
American  Statesmen  Series  commemorating  men 
of  the  West.  Among  all  his  authorities,  the 
writer  is  under  most  obligation  to  his  good 
friends  and  brethren  in  the  pleasant  Harvard 
bond,  Justin  Winsor  ("  Narrative  and  Criti- 


viii  PREFACE 

cal  History  of  America,"  "  Mississippi  Basin," 
"Westward  Movement"),  John  Fiske  ("Dis- 
covery of  America,"  the  opening  chapter,  and  the 
"  Mississippi  Valley  during  the  Civil  War  "),  and 
Theodore  Koosevelt  ("The  Winning  of  the 
West "  ). 

The  writer  desires  to  make  special  acknow- 
ledgment of  the  courtesy  of  the  Northern  Pacific 
Railway  in  furnishing  the  plate  for  the  interest- 
ing picture  of  "  Lewis  and  Clark  among  the 
Mandans,"  one  of  the  chief  ornaments  of  the 
book. 


JAMES  K.  HOSMER. 


MINNEAPOLIS  PUBLIC  LIBRARY, 
October  31,  1901. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   PREHISTORIC   MISSISSIPPI   VALLEY 

The  river  much  larger  in  pre-glacial  time.  —  Physical 
character  of  the  present  Valley.  —  Dimensions  of  the 
Basin.  —  How  far  available  for  man's  use.  —  Num- 
ber and  influence  of  its  population.  —  Antiquity  of 
man  in  the  Valley.  —  The  Indians.  —  Status  of  the 
Indians.  —  Number  and  distribution  of  the  tribes.  — 
Variety  in  their  condition.  —  Indian  life  that  of  the 
clan.  —  House  life.  —  Sachems  and  chiefs.  —  Com- 
munal customs.  —  Totems.  —  Tribes  and  confeder- 
acies. —  Great  councils.  —  Mound-building  done  by 
Indians,  not  by  a  different  race.  —  Sparseness  of  In- 
dian population.  —  Constant  warfare.  —  Cruelty  and 
cause  for  it.  —  Folk-lore.  —  Eloquence  at  councils. 

—  Methods  of  oratory.  —  Wampum  belts  and  their 
function.  —  Use   of  pantomime.  —  Aptness  of   the 
Jesuits  in  Indian  methods.  —  Physical  characteris- 
tics of  Indians.  —  In  no  proper  sense  occupants  of 

the  country,  but  only  scattered  wanderers     .     .     .   1-19 

CHAPTER  II 

THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS 

Displacement  of  primitive  Americans  by  a  higher  type 
only  a  repetition  of  what  has  happened  in  Old  World. 

—  The  Aryan  march  westward.  —  Indians  not  exter- 
minated but  shifted.  —  Their  spirit  not  quenched. 


x  CONTENTS 

—  Appearance  of  the  Spaniards  at  the  south.  —  Al- 
varez  de    Pineda.  —  Panfilo  de    Narvaez.  —  Este- 
vanico  the  first  negro.  —  Fray  Marcos  de  Nizza.  — 
Estevanico's  death.  —  Coronado's  march.  —  De  Soto 
pushes   from  Florida    westward.  —  His   death  and 
burial.  —  Decay  of  Spanish  energy.  —  French  enter 
the  valley  from  the  north.  —  Their  adaptability.  — 
Ancient  portages  and  waterways.  —  Jean  Nicolet  at 
Green  Bay.  —  Groseilliers  and  lladisson.  —  Allouez. 

—  Marquette.  —  La  Salle.  —  Discovers  the  Ohio.  — 
Reaches  the  Illinois  country.  —  Tonti.  —  La  Salle's 
persistency.  —  Destruction  of  Illinois  by  Iroquois.  — 
La  Salle  goes   down  the   Mississippi.  —  Louisiana 
named.  —  Expedition   to   mouth   of    Mississippi. — 
Misfortunes  and  death  of  La  Salle.  —  The  Recollets. 

—  Henuepin  at   the   Falls   of   St.  Anthony.  —  His 
books.  —  His  lies.  —  Iberville  founds  New  Orleans. 

—  Bienville.  —  Explorers  to  the  west.  —  La  Veren- 
drye  and  his  sons.  —  They  reach  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains. —  French   settlements   in   Louisiana.  —  Life 
and  character  of  the  habitans.  —  Vague  boundaries 
of  Louisiana.  — New  Orleans.  —  Filles  a  la  cassette. 

—  Number  of  population.  —  The  fur-trade      .     .    20-50 

CHAPTER  III 

THE   ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE 

English-speaking  men  enter  Valley  from  the  east.  — 
Walker  at  Cumberland  Gap.  —  Washington  on  head- 
waters of  the  Alleghany.  —  Building  of  Fort  Du- 
quesne.  —  Braddock's  defeat.  —  English  seize  valley 
of  the  Ohio.  —  Cession  by  France  to  Spain  of 
Louisiana  west  of  the  river  and  New  Orleans. — 
Question  as  to  Indian  right  to  soil.  —  Their  dispos- 
session inevitable.  —  Pontiac's  conspiracy.  —  His 
burial  at  St.  Louis.  —  Scotch-Irish  immigration. — 


CONTENTS  xi 

Its  origin.  —  Leadership  in  the  westward  advance.  — 
Country  about  the  sources  of  the  Tennessee  occu- 
pied. —  Character.  —  The  rifle  and  the  axe.  —  Con- 
ditions of  wilderness  life.  —  How  they  affected  the 
pioneer.  —  Daniel  Boon  sets  out  for  Kentucky.  — 
His  adventures.  —  Washington  on  the  Ohio.  — 
Right  of  whites  to  the  country.  —  Settlers  prefer 
Virginia  to  North  Carolina.  —  James  Robertson  and 
John  Sevier.  —  Watauga  Association  formed.  — 
Colonial  disputes. — Advance  along  the  Tennessee 
•  easier  than  along  the  Ohio.  —  Lord  Dunmore's  War. 

—  Robertson  at  the  great  bend  of  the  Cumberland. 

—  Henderson's  land  speculations.  —  Kentucky  set- 
tled. —  Transylvania.  —  Jonathan    Carver    in   the 
Northwest.  —  Founding  of  Lexington,  Ky.     .     .    51-74 

CHAPTER  IV 

HOW  THE   UNITED   STATES   TOOK   HOLD 

The  Revolution  in  the  Mississippi  Valley.  —  Boon  in 
the  war.  —  Simon  Kenton's  adventures.  —  French 
settlements  in  the  Valley.  —  George  Rogers  Clark 
commissioned  to  capture  them.  —  Starts  for  Kas- 
kaskia.  —  Captures  the  town.  —  Vincennes  surren- 
ders. —  The  conquest  secured.  —  The  Indians  dealt 
with  at  Cahokia.  —  Clark's  speech.  —  His  ascendency 
over  them.  —  The  British  counter-stroke.  —  Expedi- 
tion against  Viiicennes.  —  In  the  drowned  lands  of 
the  Wabash.  —  The  town  seized.  —  Complete  suc- 
cess. —  Importance  of  Clark's  achievement.  — 
Watauga  and  Holston  River  men  at  King's  Moun- 
tain. —  Sevier's  activity.  —  Progress  of  settlement. 

—  Flatboats.  —  State  of  Franklin.  —  Separatist  feel- 
ing. —  Under  the  Confederation.  —  Resignation   by 
States  of  their  Western  claims.  —  Absurd  nomencla- 
ture. —  Life  of  Abraham  Lincoln's  father  saved      75-99 


xu  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  V 

THE  CONSTITUTION   AND  THE   ORDINANCE  OF   1787 

Formation  of  the  Ohio  Company.  —  Provisions  of  the 
Ordinance.  —  Section  16  of  townships  devoted  to 
school  use.  —  Ruf us  Putnam  and  his  party.  —  Mari- 
etta founded.  —  St.  Clair  governor.  —  Cincinnati 
founded.  —  Unwise  ways  of  opening  public  domain. 

—  The  Scioto  Company. — French  at  Gallipolis. — 
Indian  hostility.  —  Effects  of  adoption  of  Constitu- 
tion. —  Expedition   of   St.    Clair.  —  His   defeat.  — 
Wrath  of  Washington.  —  Expedition  of  Wayne.  — 
His  victory.  —  Kentucky  and  Tennessee   States.  — 
Bad  relations  with  Spain  as  to  Mississippi  naviga- 
tion. —  Northwest   Territory.  —  Indiana.  —  Immi- 
gration thither  from  South.  —  Whitney's  cotton-gin 
and  its  influence.  —  Life  in  the  backwoods.  —  Camp- 
meetings.  —  Good  influence  of  schools   .     .     .     100-117 

CHAPTER  VI 

LOUISIANA   PURCHASED   AND  EXPLORED 

Separatist  feeling.  —  Irritation  as  to  mouth  of  Missis- 
sippi. —  Designs  of  Napoleon  as  to  Louisiana.  — 
Effect  upon  him  of  misfortunes  in  San  Domingo.  — 
Determines  to  sell  Louisiana  to  Americans.  —  Sur- 
prise and  embarrassment  of  negotiators.  —  The  pur- 
chase effected.  —  Wrath  of  the  Federalists.  —  Cere- 
mony of  the  cession.  —  New  Orleans  in  1803.  — 
Discontent  of  people  at  the  cession.  —  Jefferson 
orders  Lewis  and  Clark  to  explore  Louisiana. — 
Expedition  organized  and  dispatched.  —  High  char- 
acter and  skill  of  the  leaders.  —  Mandan  village 
reached.  —  The  Bird-woman.  —  Life  on  the  plains. 

—  The  Pacific  reached.  —  The  return  to  St.  Louis. 


CONTENTS  xiii 

—  Fate  of  Lewis  and  Clark.  —  Pike  commissioned 
to   explore.  —  He   reaches   northern  Minnesota.  — 
Dispatched   westward.  —  Reaches  Pike's  Peak.  — 
Sufferings      in    the     mountains.  —  Captured      by 
Spaniards.  —  His  ultimate  fate 118-137 

CHAPTER  VII 

THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY   HELD  AGAINST  HOME  CONSPIRA- 
TORS  AND   FOREIGN   ASSAILANTS 

Complications  growing  out  of  Louisiana  purchase.  — 
Aaron  Burr.  —  His  character  and  career.  —  Plots 
for  a  great  Western  empire.  —  Vists  the  West  in 
1805.  —  Meets  Gen.  James  Wilkinson.  —  Returns  to 
Washington.  —  Again  goes  West.  —  At  Blennerhas- 
sett's  Island.  —  Arrested  and  defended  by  Henry 
Clay.  —  Seized  and  brought  to  Richmond.  —  His 
trial.  —  Tecumseh.  —  Andrew  Jackson.  —  His  char- 
acter and  career.  —  War  of  1812.  —  Pakenham's 
expedition  against  New  Orleans.  —  Jackson's  pre- 
parations to  meet  it.  —  Energy  of  British  com- 
mander. —  Battle  on  the  plain  of  Chalmette.  — 
Movement  of  population  westward.  —  Introduction 
of  steamboats.  —  Life  of  the  settlers.  —  Education. 

—  Religion.  —  Finance.  —  Administration  of  justice. 

—  Roughness   of  frontier   life.  —  Missouri   organ- 
ized. —  Pro  and   anti-slavery  men.  —  Struggle   be- 
tween them  in  the  Northwest  Territory .     .     .     138-160 

CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   BLACK   SHADOW 

Human  bondage  in  the  past.  —  Negro  slavery  recog- 
nized as  an  evil  only  slowly.  —  Decay  of  slavery  at 
the  North.  —  Influence  of  the  cotton-gin  at  the 
South.  —  Negroes  perhaps  helped  rather  than  hiu- 


xiv  CONTENTS 

t  dered  by  slavery.  —  Whites  the  sinners  and  also  the 
sufferers.  —  Missouri  in  1819.  —  The  Missouri  Com- 
promise. —  Henry  Clay  the  great  pacificator.  — 
Foreign  immigration.  —  Stephen  A.  Douglas.  — 
Squatter  Sovereignty.  —  The  Nebraska  bill.— The 
Free-Soilers.  —  Their  able  leaders.  —  Struggle  in 
Congress.  —  Nebraska  bill  becomes  a  law.  —  Excite- 
ment in  the  North.  —  Immigration  into  Kansas.  — 
Border  ruffians.  —  Struggle  between  them  and  free- 
state  men.  —  Topeka  and  Lecompton  Constitutions. 

—  John  Brown  of  Ossawatomie.  —  His  character  and 
career.  —  His   blood-shedding.  —  The   Dred  Scott 
decision.  —  Taney's  opinion.  —  Curtis's   opinion.  — 
Admission  of  Kansas  as  a  free  State.  —  Lincoln- 
Douglas  debate  in  Illinois 161-182 

CHAPTER  IX 

THE  CIVIL  WAR 

St.  Louis  a  centre  of  interest.  —  Nathaniel  Lyon  and 
Frank  P.  Blair  seize  the  initiative.  —  First  appear- 
ance of  U.  S.  Grant  and  W.  T.  Sherman.  —  Death 
of  Lyon  at  Wilson's  Creek.  —  Pea  Ridge.  —  Early 
career  of  Grant.  —  He  seizes  Paducah,  Belmont.  — 
Fall  of  Fort  Henry.  —  Fort  Donelson  invested. — 
Breaking  of  Confederate  line.  —  Grant  at  Pittsburg 
Landing.  —  Battle  of  the  first  day.  —  Of  the  second 
day.  —  Island  No.  10.  —  David  Glasgow  Farragut. 

—  New  Orleans  captured.  —  Farragut  before  Vicks- 
burg.  —  Bragg's  march  northward.  —  W.  A.  Rose- 
crans.  —  Battle  of   Stone  River.  —  Vicksburg  and 
Port  Hudson  fortified.  —  Campaign  against  Vicks- 
burg. —  River  crossed  below  Grand  Gulf.  —  Grant 
penetrates   between   Pemberton   and    Johnston.  — 
Surrender  of  Vicksburg.  —  Operations  against  Port 
Hudson.  —  The   River    clear.  —  Rosecrans    seizes 


CONTENTS 


xv 


Chattanooga.  —  Bragg  reinforced  by  Longstreet.  — 
Battle  of  Chickamauga.  — Thomas  at  the  Horseshoe 
Ridge.  —  Greatness  of  the  struggle.  —  Grant  super- 
sedes Rosecrans.  —  Capture  of  Missionary  Ridge. 

—  Sherman  starts  for  the  sea.  —  Hood  marches 
north.  —  Battle  of  Franklin.  —  Thomas  blamed  for 
slowness.  —  Battle  of  Nashville.  —  Character  of  the 
Civil  War  in  the  Mississippi  Valley      .     .    .      183-203 

CHAPTER  X 

THE   MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY  AT   THE   CLOSE   OF  THE   19TH 
CENTURY 

How  the  Mississippi  River  baffles  engineering  skill. — 
James  B.  Eads.  —  The  St.  Louis  bridge.  —  The 
jetties  at  the  River's  mouth.  —  Resources  of  the 
Basin.  —  Its  great  commonwealths.  —  Assimilation 
of  foreign  elements.  —  Difficulties  from  Indians.  — 
Hopeful  outlook  as  to  the  latter.  —  Railroad  build- 
ing. —  Rapid  development.  —  Harm  from  railroads. 

—  Problems   of  the   situation.  —  Hopeful  signs.  — 
Advantages  of  association  and  movement.  —  Stimu- 
lating influence.  —  Railroads  as  helpers  and  educa- 
tors. —  How  harmony  comes  about.  —  Problems  of 
city  administration.  —  Favorable  signs.  —  The  black 
shadow  still  present.  —  Public  schools  threatened.  — 
Labor  problems.  —  Superior  sensitiveness  of  modern 
conscience.  —  Promise  for  the  future     .     .     .    204-223 

INDEX.  225-230     ' 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTKATIONS 

PAGE 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN Frontispiece 

From  an  original,  unretouched  negative,  made  in  1864, 
at  the  time  the  President  commissioned  Ulysses  Grant 
Lieutenant-General  and  Commander  of  all  the  armies 
of  the  Republic.  It  is  said  that  this  negative,  with 
that  of  General  Grant  (see  page  200),  was  made  in  com- 
memoration of  that  event. 

MAP  SHOWING  THE  EXTENT  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY     2 

MAP  SHOWING  PORTAGES  BETWEEN  GREAT  LAKES  AND 
MISSISSIPPI 32 

LA  SALLE 

After  a  design  given  in  Gravier,  which  is  said  to  be  based 

on  an  engraving  preserved  in  the  Bibliotheque  de  Rouen    40 

DANIEL  BOON 64 

From  a  picture  by  Chester  Harding  in  the  Massachusetts 
Historical  Society's  gallery. 

A  FRENCH  HOUSE  AMONG  THE  ILLINOIS 80 

From  Callot's  Atlas 

OHIO  FLATBOAT 96 

From  Callot's  Atlas 

THOMAS  JEFFERSON  IN  1805 122 

From  the  drawing  by  C.  B.  J.  Fe*vret  de  St.  Me*min  in 
the  possession  of  John  C.  Bancroft,  Esq.,  Boston. 

LEWIS  AND  CLARK  MEETING  THE  MANDAN  INDIANS  .    .  130 
From  a  painting  by  C.  M.  Russell  in  the  possession  of 
Robert  Vaughn.     By  courtesy  of  the  Northern  Pacific 
Railway. 

ANDREW  JACKSON 148 

From  a  daguerreotype. 

TENNESSEE  AND  KENTUCKY  IN  THE  CIVIL  WAR    ...  184 

ULYSSES  S.  GRANT 200 

From  a  photograph  in  1864. 


A  SHORT  HISTORY  OF  THE 
MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 


CHAPTER  I 
THE  PREHISTORIC  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 

THE  Mississippi  River  is  believed  to  have  been 
flowing  as  far  back  in  geological  time  as  what  is 
known  as  the  cretaceous  era.  Its  volume  once 
was  much  greater  than  at  present.  Lake  Michi- 
gan discharged  into  it  by  a  channel  now  closely 
followed  by  the  Chicago  drainage  canal;  Lake 
Erie  by  the  valley  of  the  Maumee ;  and  a  vast 
sheet  of  water  long  since  disappeared  known  to 
geologists  as  Lake  Agassiz,  by  channels  farther 
north.  The  river  wore  its  way  through  strata  of 
limestone  depositing  in  its  bed  alluvium  to  the 
depth  of  hundreds  of  feet,  the  layer  thickening 
as  the  Gulf  was  approached.  "We  are  told  of  an 
age  when  the  surface  of  our  continent  as  far  south 
as  the  Ohio  River,  and  a  line  running  in  continua- 
tion of  it  into  the  remote  west,  was  covered  by  ice 
many  feet  in  thickness,  the  action  of  which  caused 
great  changes  in  the  area  underneath.  The  Mis- 


2      THE  PREHISTORIC   MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 

sissippi  after  the  glacial  age  shrank  much  in  vol- 
ume. Lake  Agassiz  disappeared,  while  Lake 
Michigan  and  the  others  of  its  chain  discharged 
through  the  St.  Lawrence  instead  of  southward. 
Within  the  broad  channel  scooped  out  of  the  lime- 
stone in  pre-glacial  time,  the  river  cut  an  interior 
channel  from  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio  downward, 
the  soft  alluvium  making  the  work  not  difficult. 
This  is  the  channel  of  to-day.  The  enclosing 
uplands  to  east  and  west  are  faced  with  bluffs  of 
light-colored  clay,  between  which  the  river  goes 
looping  along  its  course,  in  summer  much  attenu- 
ated, but  in  times  of  flood  a  wide  torrent  breaking 
new  and  ever  new  paths  for  itself  through  the  soft 
soil  which  lets  it  wander  as  it  will.  At  New  Or- 
leans, where  the  alluvial  deposit  is  a  thousand  feet 
deep,  the  Mississippi  runs  in  a  trench  along  an 
elevated  ridge,  having  raised  itself  by  deposits  on 
its  bed  until  it  flows  above  the  level  of  the  coun- 
try it  is  traversing.  Sometimes  breaking  through 
its  banks  here,  banks  which  man  has  tried  to 
strengthen  by  levees,  the  river  pours  over  the  land 
in  crevasses,  submerging  broad  regions.  The  fin- 
ger-like extensions  into  the  Gulf  are  prolongations 
of  the  embankments,  the  main  stream  reaching  the 
sea  in  several  outlets.  Before  each  mouth,  or 
pass,  lie  broad  shallows,  built  up  from  the  bot- 
tom of  the  Gulf  by  the  outpouring  sediment,  and 
thus  the  land  grows  on  and  on  as  the  centu- 
ries go. 


GLACIAL  CONDITIONS  3 

Above  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio,  near  which  the 
ice  terminated  in  the  glacial  age,  the  character  of 
the  river-channel  is  quite  different  from  its  lower 
course.  It  soon  narrows,  and  precipitous  bluffs 
often  border  it  right  and  left.  Now  and  then  a 
limestone  ledge  thrown  across  its  bed  gives  rise 
to  a  languid  rapid.  In  its  upper  course  the  bluffs 
become  often  ranges  of  bordering  hills,  crested 
sometimes  with  outcropping  rock  that  might  al- 
most be  mistaken  for  ruined  towers  and  pinnacles, 
like  those  of  the  Rhine  or  Danube.  The  ice  age 
everywhere  wrought  changes  in  the  river  and  its 
valley  ;  but  the  pre  and  post-glacial  conditions  are 
contrasted  nowhere  more  interestingly  than  at  the 
Falls  of  St.  Anthony,  where  the  river,  having  been 
turned  by  the  deposit  of  drift  from  its  first  course, 
was  made  to  flow  over  a  thin  sheet  of  hard  lime- 
stone supported  on  a  bed  of  softer  rock.  Here 
first  was  a  cataract  one  hundred  feet  high,  which 
has  cut  its  way  backward  forming  a  gorge  of  eight 
miles.  The  height  of  the  fall  has  gradually  dimin- 
ished, until  at  present  it  has  subsided  into  a  long- 
drawn  tumbling  rapid. 

The  breadth  to-day  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  in 
its  widest  part,  from  the  head-waters  of  the  Ohio 
to  the  head-waters  of  the  Missouri,  is  fully  eigh- 
teen hundred  miles  ;  the  length  of  the  valley  from 
the  lakes  and  rills  where  the  river  takes  its  origin 
to  the  tips  of  the  strange  fingers  which  its  delta 
thrusts  out  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  is  twenty-five 


4    THE  PREHISTORIC   MISSISSIPPI   VALLEY 

hundred  miles.  The  area  of  the  basin  may  be 
set  down  as  a  million  and  a  quarter  square  miles. 
Such  a  river  with  such  a  valley  can  be  found  no- 
where else  in  the  world.  While  the  Amazon  may 
surpass  the  Mississippi  in  volume  and  perhaps 
also  drains  a  basin  of  richer  fertility,  its  situa- 
tion nearly  under  the  equator  renders  its  basin 
less  habitable  for  the  better  breeds  of  men.  Not 
in  Europe,  Asia,  or  Africa,  can  a  rival  as  to  ser- 
viceability be  found  for  the  Mississippi ;  for  the 
streams  that  approach  it  in  size  wander  through 
long  stretches  of  desert,  or  are  beset  by  pestilen- 
tial swamps,  or  are  lost  in  frozen  regions  within 
the  Arctic  Circle.  Scarcely  a  square  mile,  how- 
ever, of  the  Mississippi  Valley  but  welcomes  hu- 
man habitation.  No  rugged  mountains  embarrass 
the  main  stream  or  the  tributaries,  except  about 
their  remote  sources ;  there  are  few  sand-wastes 
or  morasses  which  cannot  be  reclaimed  to  human 
uses.  Almost  every  rood  of  the  space  can  be  made 
to  furnish  a  home  and  sustenance,  if  not  to  the 
farmer,  at  any  rate  to  the  ranchman  or  the  miner. 
For  its  friendly  cherishing  the  river,  with  its  afflu- 
ents, deserves  to  be  called  the  great  mother-stream 
of  the  world.  Half  the  States  of  the  American 
Union  pour  their  waters  into  these  currents.  No 
other  region  of  the  earth's  surface  contains,  per- 
haps, so  many  of  the  great  English-speaking  race. 
The  centre  of  the  valley  is  at  the  same  time  nearly 
the  centre  of  population  and  of  influence  of  the 


PRIMEVAL  MAN  5 

United  States.  For  what  it  is,  and  what  it  is  to 
be,  the  story  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  deserves  to 
be  told ;  and  the  epoch  when  its  spaces  become 
occupied  with  commonwealths  thoroughly  organ- 
ized and  equipped  offers  a  fitting  moment. 

For  the  first  traces  of  man  in  the  Mississippi 
Valley  we  must  go  back  to  what  is  called  in  geol- 
ogy the  Pleistocene  age.  It  was  then  that  the  gla- 
cial phenomena  were  in  evidence,  and  coeval  with 
them  plainly  human  life  went  forward.  Old  stone 
(palaeo-lithic)  implements  are  found  which  may 
be  referred  undoubtedly  to  the  age  of  ice.  Quite 
possibly,  for  the  first  man  it  would  be  necessary 
to  ascend  to  the  pliocene  ;  at  any  rate  he  was  con- 
temporary with  the 

"  Dragons  of  the  prime 
That  tare  each  other  in  their  slime." 

This  primeval  man  is  believed  to  have  resembled 
the  Esquimaux,  a  race  ever  fighting  with  cold; 
while  the  Indians,  who  were  in  possession  of  the 
continent  when  recorded  history  begins,  were  of  a 
type  quite  different.  As  to  the  origin  of  the  In- 
dians fanciful  theories  abound,  one  interesting  to 
many  being  that  they  are  descended  from  the 
"  Lost  Tribes  of  the  House  of  Israel,"  dispossessed 
by  Asiatic  conquerors  to  wander  as  far  as  America 
across  Bering  Straits.  Who  shall  tell  us  whence 
they  came  ?  When  history  begins,  at  any  rate, 
this  one  race  is  in  possession  from  the  Arctic  Cir- 
cle to  Cape  Horn,  red  in  hue,  their  physical  char- 


6    THE  PREHISTORIC   MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 

acteristics  in  general  pointing  to  a  common  origin, 
their  languages  allied.  This  widely-spread  popu- 
lation had  attained  to  various  stages  of  culture. 

Following  the  conclusions  of  the  most  philo- 
sophical students,  among  whom  the  name  of  Lewis 
H.  Morgan l  holds  an  honorable  place,  it  must  be 
said  that  below  civilization  there  are  two  stages  — 
savagery  and  barbarism ;  and  that  each  of  these 
stages  contains  three  subdivisions.  If  the  power 
of  articulate  speech  be  taken  as  marking  the  line 
between  the  brute  and  the  savage,  the  capacity 
to  catch  fish  and  to  utilize  fire  may  be  taken  as 
a  second  step  lifting  the  possessor  into  middle 
savagery.  That  in  turn  is  passed  with  the  inven- 
tion of  the  bow  and  arrow,  armed  with  which 
evolving  man  stands  in  higher  savagery.  With 
the  acquirement  of  the  art  of  making  pottery,  as 
we  trace  him  forward,  he  passes  from  savagery 
into  lower  barbarism ;  and  middle  barbarism  is 
reached  when  the  power  is  attained  to  domesticate 
other  animals  than  the  dog.  Predatory  life,  that 
of  the  hunter,  now  takes  the  second  place,  while 
pastoral  life  comes  into  the  foreground.  In  this 
stage  is  attained  the  power  of  smelting  copper. 
Still  another  rise,  into  higher  barbarism,  comes 
with  the  capacity  to  till  the  soil,  making  use  of 
irrigation.  To  higher  barbarism  also  belongs  the 
capacity  to  build  with  stone  and  adobe  brick,  and 
to  smelt  iron.  Finally  the  leap  to  the  possession 

1  Houses  and  House-Life  of  the  American  Aborigines. 


INDIAN  STAGES  OF  CULTURE      7 

of  an  alphabet  and  of  written  records  marks  the 
attainment  of  the  lowest  stage  of  civilization. 
The  Indians  of  America,  though  of  a  common 
origin,  varied  in  their  condition,  attaining  now  to 
one,  now  to  another,  of  these  stages  of  culture. 
No  tribe,  however,  has  gone  beyond  middle  bar- 
barism. Capacity  to  work  iron  has  never  been 
reached  among  them  ;  much  less  the  possession  of 
an  alphabet  and  written  records.  Picture-writing, 
indeed,  was  widely  practiced ;  also  a  curious  mne- 
monic use  of  wampum-belts  and  strings  of  beads ; 
and  these  went  far  to  take  the  place  of  the  pen  of 
the  scribe. 

All  these  peoples  were  pottery-makers,  and  so 
had  passed  at  least  from  upper  savagery  into  lower 
barbarism ;  their  weapons  and  tools  were  new- 
stone  (neo-lithic)  and  therefore  not  the  rudest. 
Some  tribes  of  the  Muscogees,  and  perhaps  the 
Mandans  and  Minnetarees,  had  attained  the  middle 
stage  of  barbarism,  having  domesticated  animals 
other  than  the  dog ;  they  reached  pastoral  life  and 
rudimentary  tillage.  Of  a  lower  and  fiercer  type 
were  the  Dacotas  and  the  Huron-Iroquois.  On 
the  other  hand  the  Aztecs  and  pueblo-dwellers  of 
New  Mexico  were  higher,  having  reached  tillage 
with  irrigation,  and  the  art  of  building  with 
adobe  brick ;  these,  however,  are  scarcely  within 
our  ken,  their  outskirts  barely  reaching  the  remot- 
est sources  of  the  Arkansas.  It  is  quite  possible, 
thinks  Mr.  John  Fiske,1  that  maize,  the  gift  of 

1  Discovery  of  America,  ch.  i. 


8    THE  PREHISTORIC   MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 

the  god  Mondamin,  the  plant  so  full  of  use  and 
beauty,  to  such  an  extent  the  basis  of  life  in 
America,  both  ancient  and  modern,  exercised  a 
retarding  influence  upon  the  tribes  of  our  valley. 
It  grew  everywhere,  requiring  only  the  rudest 
care  for  its  production.  Since  an  abundant  and 
palatable  form  of  sustenance  was  thus  always  right 
at  hand,  there  being  no  necessity  for  careful  agri- 
culture, the  tribes  were  content  to  be  slothful. 
Beans,  pumpkins,  tobacco,  also,  crops  of  less  value 
but  held  in  esteem,  were  in  like  manner  easy  to 
raise ;  so  that  the  squaw  with  her  clumsy  hoe  of 
stone  sufficed  unassisted,  from  generation  to  gen- 
eration, to  furnish  the  livelihood. 

How  primitive  the  status  of  the  Indian  was  is 
proved  by  the  fact  that  throughout  the  valley, 
throughout  America,  in  fact,  kinship  was  reckoned 
through  the  female  only.  There  was  no  adum- 
bration in  those  dim  minds  of  any  sacredness  in 
the  marriage  tie :  the  "  extension  of  infancy  " 
producing  family  life  and  giving  rise  to  humane 
altruism  had  scarcely  begun  to  affect  aboriginal 
society.  Exogamy,  the  law  that  a  man  must 
marry  out  of  his  clan,  was  the  rule,  and  the  clan 
was  the  ultimate  social  unit.  A  group  of  clans 
formed,  in  anthropological  parlance  a  phratry ;  a 
group  of  phratries  a  tribe,  —  the  tribes  being  in 
some  cases  farther  grouped  into  confederacies.  It 
is  a  momentous  change,  thinks  Mr.  Fiske,  when 
kinship  comes  to  be  reckoned  by  the  male  instead 


PRIMITIVE  ABORIGINAL  LIFE  9 

of  the  female  line.  Only  the  Aryans  and  Semites 
have  risen  to  this,  the  change  probably  coming 
in  upper,  or  possibly  late  in  middle  barbarism. 
After  the  domestication  of  animals  property  (in 
Latin  peculium^  derived  from  pecus,  a  flock) 
became  possible  as  never  before,  for  flocks  and 
herds  were  the  first  extensive  forms  of  property. 
Exclusive  possession  of  the  wife  was  part  of  the 
system  of  private  property.  First,  it  was  poly- 
gamy, the  system  of  many  wives,  the  patriarchal 
father  then  becoming  the  link  in  the  numerous 
family.  It  was  a  great  advance  on  what  had  pre- 
ceded, and  to  this,  scholars  think,  is  largely  due 
the  dominance  in  the  world  of  Aryan  and  Semite. 
In  America  this  state  was  far  from  being  realized, 
kinship  being  reckoned  only  through  the  mother, 
while  marriage  could  be  terminated  at  will. 

A  study  of  the  Indian  dwelling  lets  one  into 
aboriginal  domestic  life  most  readily.1  The  "  long 
house  "  of  the  Iroquois,  the  type  most  carefully 
studied,  was  an  enclosure  of  stakes  and  bark,  the 
apertures  covered  with  skins.  Along  the  interior, 
from  fifty  to  one  hundred  feet  in  length,  stalls  were 
contrived  to  right  and  left,  an  aisle  running  be- 
tween. These  stalls  contained  platforms  or  bunks 
raised  from  the  ground  for  sleeping ;  from  the 
ceiling  hung  corn,  pumpkins,  tobacco,  the  products 
on  which  the  savage  depended.  Along  the  aisle  at 

1  Morgan :  Houses  and  House-Life  of  the  American  Aborigi- 
nes. 


10    THE  PREHISTORIC   MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 

intervals  fires  were  kindled,  the  smoke  ascending 
through  holes  in  the  roof,  each  fire  sufficing  for 
four  stalls  as  each  stall  sufficed  for  a  domestic 
group.  In  the  groups  thus  collected  in  the  long 
house  the  mothers  were  all  of  one  clan,  but  the 
fathers  came  from  other  clans.  In  each  house- 
hold a  large  community  of  goods  prevailed,  the 
mother  presiding  over  the  distribution  of  food, 
and  the  life  of  the  house  in  general.  The  bride 
brought  her  mate  home  with  her ;  if  shiftless  and 
worthless  the  women  turned  him  out  to  go  back  to 
his  own  clan  or  to  be  chosen  by  another  woman ;  for 
the  woman  ruled  the  house,  although  at  the  same 
time  she  was  the  drudge.  What  children  were 
born  were  counted  with  their  mother's  clan,  family 
life  in  our  sense  being  unknown.  Each  clan  had 
at  its  head  certain  elective  officials,  the  sachems 
who  were  chosen  for  peace,  and  chiefs  who  were 
chosen  for  war.  The  sachem  or  chief  could  not 
succeed  his  father,  but  might  succeed  any  uterine 
brother  (son  of  the  same  mother)  or  his  uncle  on 
his  mother's  side.  The  clans  might  number  fifty 
or  sixty  ;  property  was  transmitted  in  the  female 
line  ;  upon  every  member  of  a  clan  lay  the  duty 
to  defend  and  avenge  his  clansmen. 

Though  the  habitation  was  not  always  a  "  long 
house,"  still  the  variations  from  that  type  were 
not  important,  the  Indian  dwelling  universally 
being  adapted,  like  that,  to  clan  and  communal 
life.  Among  the  Mandans  the  structure  was  cir- 


THE  LONG  HOUSE  AND  THE  CLAN       11 

cular ;  amcmg  the  Southern  Indians,  the  Musco- 
gees,  the  clan  dwelt  in  small  clustered  cabins  ;  else- 
where there  were  tepees  of  irregular  shape ;  while 
in  the  far  west  the  more  elaborate  pueblo,  a  con- 
struction of  adobe  brick  was  reared  by  the  races 
that  had  reached  middle  barbarism.  All  the  con- 
structions, however,  were  only  modifications  of  one 
idea  —  an  arrangement  suited  to  a  time  when  as 
yet  the  modern  family  was  not,  and  a  most  primi- 
tive status  was  to  be  provided  for.  In  all  this 
house-life  one  interesting  trait  was  universal,  — 
hospitality.  Both  to  tribesmen  and  strangers  who 
appeared  within  the  rude  shelter,  kindness  must 
be  shown  ;  all  were  to  be  fed  and  cherished. 

Among  the  Indians  of  the  Great  Valley  every- 
where the  names  of  persons  were  significant ;  often 
they  were  grotesque,  often  wildly  picturesque. 
The  clan  itself  always  had  a  name,  usually  that  of 
some  animal,  the  wolf,  the  turtle,  the  salmon ; 
of  this  some  rude  representation  was  either  drawn 
or  carved,  called  the  totem.  Each  clan  had  its 
council  of  which  women  might  be  members ;  in- 
deed women  might  compose  the  council  entirely  ; 
for  their  position  in  aboriginal  society  was  a  more 
dignified  one  than  has  often  been  supposed  ;  squaw 
sachems  were  not  uncommon,  who  sometimes  be- 
came persons  of  note. 

The  number  of  clans  making  up  a  tribe  varied 
greatly.  Among  the  Chippewas  it  might  be 
twenty,  though  the  more  usual  number  was  eight 


12    THE  PREHISTORIC   MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 

or  ten.  TKe  phratry,  intermediate  between  the 
clan  and  tribe,  was  less  distinct  in  Indian  society, 
though  it  plainly  appears  as  a  grouping  together 
of  two  or  three  clans.  The  tribes  were  marked 
out  by  a  common  dialect ;  there  were  sometimes 
tribal  chiefs  higher  than  clan  chiefs,  though  these 
never  developed  into  kings.  The  grouping  of 
tribes  into  confederacies  was  rather  rare,  though 
the  Iroquois  and  the  Aztecs,  to  the  right  and  left 
of  the  valley,  showed  marked  organizations  of  this 
kind.  In  a  group  of  tribes  the  clan  organizations 
ran  through  all,  the  brothers  and  sisters  of  the 
wolf,  bear,  or  turtle,  whatever  the  totem  might  be, 
recognizing  one  another  by  subtle  freemasonry, 
whether  Senecas,  Onondagos,  or  Mohawks,  the 
recognition  forming  a  bond  of  immense  strength. 
The  great  council  of  a  confederacy  could  not  con- 
vene itself,  but  could  be  convened  by  any  tribal 
council.  At  such  times  the  voting  went  by  tribes, 
the  sachems  from  the  clans  of  each  tribe  being 
obliged  to  make  a  unit.  Among  the  Six  Nations 
there  were  two  prominent  chieftainships,  one  in  the 
clan  of  the  wolf,  the  other  in  that  of  the  turtle, 
and  both  in  the  tribe  of  the  Senecas ;  for  when 
history  begins,  the  Senecas  as  touching  the  lakes 
and  reaching  out  toward  the  Mississippi  Valley 
were  in  the  fore-front,  bearing  the  brunt  in  many 
a  foray  of  rapine  and  extermination  which  might 
reach  even  to  the  far  western  prairies. 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  during  pre- 


THE  MOUND  BUILDERS  13 

historic  time  any  race  different  from  or  more 
advanced  than  the  Indians  played  any  part. 
Throughout  the  basin,  but  particularly  between 
the  river  and  the  Alleghanies,  a  feature  which  has 
caused  wonder  is  the  mounds,  the  constructions 
amounting  to  thousands  in  number,  ranging  from 
tumuli  scarcely  noticeable  to  extensive  terraces, 
to  long  lines  of  earthworks,  to  outlines  of  the 
forms  of  serpents  and  other  creatures  embossed 
upon  the  plain  in  ridges  that  run  for  great  dis- 
tances. The  town  of  Marietta,  in  Ohio,  stands  on 
terraces  and  ramparts  which  must  have  required 
in  constructing  thousands  of  busy  hands  and  many 
years.  The  rings  at  Circleville  and  elsewhere  and 
the  great  ramparts  at  Fort  Ancient  it  would  daunt 
a  capable  modern  engineer  to  imitate.  In  the  city 
of  St.  Louis  formerly  towered  an  artificial  hill 
to  rear  which  might  have  taxed  the  power  of  Che- 
ops or  Rameses.  The  conclusion,  however,  seems 
at  present  to  be,  that  there  was  no  special  race 
of  mound  builders  :  that  the  mounds  came  from 
the  ancestors  of  the  Indians,  and  from  a  time 
probably  no  further  back  than  the  thirteenth  or 
fourteenth  century  of  our  era.  Excavations  have 
revealed  no  finds  indicating  any  superior  civiliza- 
tion; since  Europeans  have  appeared,  mounds 
have  been  constructed.  It  is  believed  that  the 
Mandans,  a  link  between  the  lower  tribes  and  the 
pueblo  races,  may  not  long  since  have  been  mound 
builders.  So,  too,  the  Shawnees  in  Ohio  and  the 


14    THE  PREHISTORIC  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 

Cherokees  farther  south,  races  which  when  his- 
tory begins  had  progressed  far  enough  to  have  a 
somewhat  stable  agriculture,  and  to  have  domes- 
ticated the  horse  and  the  ox.  The  purpose  of  the 
terraces  is  believed  to  have  been  to  furnish  sites 
for  council-houses,  or  indeed  for  the  communal 
dwellings,  such  as  have  been  described.  The 
cones  were  probably  intended  for  burial  places ; 
the  ramparts,  perhaps,  for  defense.  The  work 
presupposes  a  vast  population  instead  of  the  scat- 
tered handfuls  of  men  which  made  up  the  Indian 
race  at  the  European  coming,  even  in  the  most 
populous  areas.  It  implies,  however,  no  capability 
of  which  the  Indian  was  not  possessed. 

Throughout  the  Mississippi  Valley  then,  based 
on  the  social  frame-work  just  outlined,  went  for- 
ward for  no  one  can  say  how  many  ages  a  vigor- 
ous life.  The  forests  hung  heavy  on  the  slopes  of 
the  Alleghanies  to  the  east,  rolling  thence  west- 
ward over  the  areas  threaded  by  the  Ohio  and  its 
tributaries.  Before  the  great  river  was  reached 
the  prairies  formed  a  break  in  the  leafy  world ; 
and  beyond  the  river,  after  new  forests,  the  valley 
at  last  ran  on  into  great  plains,  with  timber  belts 
along  the  streams  indeed,  but  for  the  most  part 
grass-covered  lands,  the  pastures  of  countless  wild 
herds.  The  Indian  races  were  scattered  sparsely 
throughout  wood  and  plain.  War  was  an  almost 
constant  condition,  the  life  of  the  men  being  spent 
in  the  most  energetic  fighting,  with  intervals  of 


INDIAN  WARFARE  15 

sloth  broken  only  by  an  occasional  hunt.  In  the 
campaigns  the  risks  and  hardships  encountered 
went  to  the  utmost  power  of  human  endurance. 
No  race  has  ever  shown  more  courage,  both  active 
and  passive,  than  the  Indians  have  shown  in  their 
way;  and,  as  regards  skill,  the  deftness  of  the 
panther  in  pursuit  of  its  prey  was  paralleled. 
The  cruelty  of  the  warfare  was  most  ruthless  and 
horrible.  Indian  life  being  that  of  the  clan,  with 
the  family  most  rudimentary,  the  "  extension  of 
infancy,"  and  family  life  in  general,  had  done  no- 
thing to  soften  it.  But  we  are  taught  that  in  the 
human  evolution  it  is  influences  from  these  sources 
that  lead  to  gentleness  and  humanity.  It  was  in- 
evitable then  that  the  Indian's  heart  should  know 
not  the  quality  of  mercy.  In  the  thicket  and  on 
prairie  went  forward  ceaseless  fighting  between 
combatants  pitiless  as  tigers ;  while  energetic 
stocks,  like  the  Iroquois,  butchered  whole  nations 
remorselessly.  Every  camping  ground  was  the 
scene  of  such  tortures  as  no  civilized  man  can 
bear  to  hear  described.  Vast  tracts  were  unin- 
habited because  out  of  them  the  population  had 
been  killed ;  these  were  visited  only  now  and  then 
by  hunters,  or  swept  across  by  war-parties  bent 
on  some  dreadful  errand  of  extermination  to  tribes 
living  beyond.  The  sparseness  of  the  Indian  pop- 
ulation at  the  time  when  history  in  America  begins 
is  often  overlooked.  The  tribes,  in  fact,  were  only 
encamped  here  and  there  in  the  country ;  in  no 
proper  sense  did  they  occupy  it. 


16    THE  PREHISTORIC   MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 

The  Indian's  mind  in  its  dim  consciousness 
worked  often  in  interesting  ways.  His  folk-lore 
was  abundant  and  charged  with  picturesque  poetry. 
At  the  councils,  it  was  often  the  case  that  the  ora- 
tors thrilled  the  white  spectators  present  with  wild 
and  beautiful  outbursts  of  eloquence.  There  it  is, 
perhaps,  that  the  Indian  appears  at  his  best.  The 
council-fire  was  kindled,  and  close  at  hand  to  it, 
decked  out  with  feathers  of  the  hawk  and  eagle, 
with  skins  of  the  elk  or  the  bear,  the  naked,  pow- 
erful breasts  painted  in  vermilion,  in  yellow,  in 
black,  or  in  white,  sat  the  savage  auditory.  Close 
at  hand  on  the  river-margin,  the  canoes  that  had 
brought  them  were  drawn  up.  These,  the  master- 
pieces of  Indian  handicraft,  were  broad  sheets  of 
birch-bark,  cinnamon-brown,  as  if  to  match  the 
skin  of  their  owners,  rolled  up  about  a  light 
framework,  stitched  with  deer  sinews  or  liga- 
ments of  pliant  wood,  and  embroidered  with 
beads  or  quills  of  the  porcupine.  The  pipe  of 
peace,  set  off  with  plumes,  was  passed  from  hand 
to  hand.  The  saturnine  crowd  sat  in  stolid  rows, 
no  face  betraying  a  sign  of  what  thought  might  be 
passing  within.  The  orator  advanced  to  the  front 
where  sat  the  old  chief  whose  function  it  was,  in 
the  absence  of  writing,  to  preserve  a  record  of  all 
that  might  be  said.  Belts  of  wampum,  bits  of 
shell,  or  beads  affixed  to  leather  strips,  variously 
colored,  and  sometimes  objects  of  beauty,  lay  in  a 
pile  close  at  hand  ;  each  had  a  mnemonic  signifi- 


INDIAN  ORATORY  17 

cance,  the  orator  handing  one  for  each  point,  as 
the  speech  proceeded,  to  the  record-keeper,  who 
strung  them  in  turn  upon  a  pole.  He  marked 
with  care  what  each  denoted,  charging  his  memory 
that  the  point  might  be  recalled  upon  occasion  in 
the  future. 

"  Brothers,  with  this  belt  I  open  your  ears  that 
you  may  hear.  I  remove  grief  and  sorrow  from 
your  hearts.  I  draw  from  your  feet  the  thorns 
that  have  pierced  them  on  your  journey  hither. 
I  sweep  the  seats  about  the  council-fire  that  you 
may  sit  at  ease.  I  wash  your  heads  and  bodies 
that  your  spirits  may  be  refreshed.  I  condole 
with  you  on  the  loss  of  your  friends  who  have 
died.  I  wipe  out  any  blood  that  may  have  been 
spilt  between  us." 

Some  such  exordium  as  this,  a  stated  formula, 
is  [said  to  have  regularly  preceded  the  address. 
This  being  finished,  and  the  wampum-belt  to  com- 
memorate it  delivered,  the  orator  was  ready  to 
proceed  with  his  special  message.  The  language 
was  sure  to  be  intensely  figurative.  If  the  speaker 
earnestly  desired  peace,  he  might  say :  "  Brothers, 
in  my  country  grows  a  lofty  pine.  I  seize  it  and 
pluck  it  up  by  the  roots.  Looking  into  the  hole 
I  discern  a  dark,  swift-flowing  stream.  Into  this 
I  throw  the  hatchet,  and  it  is  swept  away  for- 
ever." 

The  words  were  helped  out  by  an  extraordinary 
use  of  pantomime,  and  in  this  respect  the  Indian 


18    THE  PREHISTORIC   MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY 

orators  are  said  to  have  possessed  sometimes  mar- 
velous dramatic  power.  It  might  be  that  a  chief 
was  invited  to  the  home  of  a  remote  tribe.  His 
journey  thither  would  be  acted  out  in  all  its  de- 
tails by  the  orator.*  Now  he  would  be  presented 
sailing  along  a  smooth  stream,  his  arms  plying  the 
paddle ;  anon  he  would  be  struggling  in  a  rapid, 
the  surges  hurling  his  canoe  upon  the  ledges; 
again,  he  would  be  toiling  through  heavy  snow, 
his  legs  clogged  with  the  encumbering  burden ; 
still  again,  he  would  be  fighting  off  human  enemies 
with  war-whoop  and  weapons.  At  length,  how- 
ever, would  come  the  arrival,  the  welcome  to  the 
hospitality  of  the  long  house,  the  clustered  cabins, 
or  the  tepees,  after  the  protracted  striving.  While 
the  description  in  words  would  be  vivid,  at  the 
same  time  the  story  would  be  acted  out,  —  each 
feature,  each  limb,  each  muscle  of  the  lithe  body 
being  pressed  into  service  to  make  vivid  the  por- 
trayal. As  the  delivery  of  the  message  proceeded, 
partly  vehement  speech,  partly  intervals  of  silence 
filled  with  dramatic  action,  the  delivery  of  a  wam- 
pum-belt to  the  recorder  marked  each  important 
point.  Meanwhile  the  auditory,  in  rows  about 
the  council-fire,  squatted  with  knees  drawn  up  to 
their  chins,  would  sometimes,  if  the  orator  were 
skillful,  lose  their  impassiveness,  start  to  their  feet 
with  deep  guttural  exclamations,  caught  away 
from  their  stolidity  by  the  power  of  the  speaker 
and  actor.  While  in  this  wild  rhetoric  the  savages 


INDIAN  CHARACTERISTICS  19 

unquestionably  were  matchless,  some  among  the 
Europeans  who  first  encountered  them  showed 
here  a  marvelous  skill  in  imitation,  none  more  so 
than  the  able  and  intrepid  Jesuits,  whose  minute 
records  in  their  "  Relations,"  are  by  far  our  best 
authorities  as  regards  the  life  and  character  of 
the  forest  races.1 

Such  were  the  main  features  of  primitive  life  in 
the  Mississippi  Valley,  going  on  from  immemorial 
antiquity,  the  aborigine  never  rising  above  the 
middle  status  of  barbarism.  The  race  possessed 
bodies  lithe,  powerful,  of  vast  endurance;  under 
their  hard  conditions  there  could  be  survival  only 
of  the  fittest ;  those  marked  .by  defect  or  weak- 
ness fell  out  through  the  working  of  the  inexora- 
ble law.  It  was  a  race  characterized  by  energy 
passing  into  unmitigated  ferocity ;  that  it  should 
be  so  was  inevitable ;  for  man  still  in  the  stage  of 
barbarism  has  not  been  subjected  to  the  influences 
which  soften  and  humanize.  It  was  a  race  most 
sparsely  scattered  over  a  vast  area :  it  cannot  be 
said  to  have  at  all  occupied  the  continent ;  much 
less  was  there  any  utilizing  of  its  resources,  which 
indeed  were  scarcely  touched.  We  have  now  to 
tell  how  the  new  era  came. 

1  Jesuit  Relations,  edited  by  Reuben  Gold  Thwaites. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS 

WHAT  has  happened  in  the  new  world  but  re- 
peats what  happened  in  the  old.  In  the  old  world, 
too,  there  was  an  ice  age,  when  an  arctic  tempera- 
ture prevailed  as  far  south  as  the  Mediterranean. 
In  the  Mediterranean,  as  in  the  White  Sea  to-day, 
sounded  the  crashing  of  wave-tossed  floes  ;  icebergs 
scraped  the  isles  of  Greece;  the  slopes  devoted 
now  to  the  vine  and  the  olive  were  smoothed  for 
their  present  function  by  the  sliding  avalanche. 
In  the  ice  age  man  existed  in  the  old  world  just 
as  in  the  new,  and  the  evidence  makes  it  certain 
that  the  type  of  man  in  both  hemispheres  was  the 
same.  The  weapons  and  utensils  of  the  old  and 
of  the  new  stone  age  correspond  in  the  two  hemi- 
spheres ;  to  a  large  extent  the  extinct  brutes  with 
whom  primitive  man  contended  for  his  foothold 
upon  the  earth  are  the  same  in  the  old  world  as 
in  the  new.  A  museum  of  aboriginal  European 
relics  offers  to  view  the  same  flint  arrowheads 
and  spears,  the  same  rude  hammers  and  axes,  as 
are  found  in  America. 

At  some  immensely  distant  time  an  aboriginal 
tribe  began  to  grow  refined.  The  scholarship  of 


COURSE   OF  ARYAN  CONQUEST  21 

the  present  moment  speaks  much  less  confidently 
than  did  that  of  forty  years  ago  with  regard  to 
these  earliest  civilized  men.  Still  the  evidence  of 
language  cannot  be  discredited,  and  this  seems  to 
show  that  the  dominant  races  of  India  and  Per- 
sia, on  the  one  hand,  and  of  Europe  on  the  other, 
run  back  to  common  forefathers  whose  mysterious 
home,  once  confidently  placed  in  the  highlands  of 
central  Asia,  no  cautious  student  now  ventures  to 
assign.  Westward,  however,  they  appear  to  have 
swept,  —  westward  with  no  retreat.  These  Ary- 
ans, to  adopt  what  has  been  the  most  convenient 
designation,  displaced  the  aborigines  of  Greece, 
then  of  Italy.  They  passed  over  central  Europe, 
and  in  Scandinavia  replaced  the  squalor  of  primi- 
tive man  with  the  vigor  of  the  Viking.  When 
history  begins  they  had  paused,  stopped  by  the  At- 
lantic surf.  Greek,  Roman,  Teuton,  Sclave,  Kelt, 
and  Norseman  were  in  possession  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  Europe,  —  races  which  the 
scholar  knows  by  the  unerring  evidence  of  words 
to  be  brethren  of  the  great  Aryan  household; 
races,  too,  which  had  exterminated  the  cave  dwell- 
ers  and  their  congeners,  to  whom  they  were  dis- 
tinctly superior. 

Did  the  impulse  die  when  Europe  was  possessed  ? 
We  do  not  know  when  it  was  that  the  Aryan  van- 
guard pressing  westward  was  stopped  at  the  ocean 
shore ;  but  one  night  in  October,  1492,  a  sea- 
tossed  son  of  the  Aryan  race,  looking  westward 


22  THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS 

from  the  deck  of  his  little  caravel,  beheld  a  light. 
It  was  a  torch  of  grass,  perhaps,  swung  for  a  mo- 
ment high  in  air  by  some  Indian  fisherman,  busy 
with  his  nets.  It  was  the  first  clear  signal  from 
the  new  world  to  the  race  of  masters  advancing 
to  its  dominion.  Westward  across  they  came  by 
tens,  then  by  fifties,  then  by  thousands.  Like  the 
flint  arrowhead  makers  of  the  old  world,  Massa- 
soit,  Philip,  Powhatan,  disappeared  along  the 
coast.  By  the  interior  streams  the  Algonquin  was 
displaced,  and  at  last  the  fierce  Iroquois.  Far 
inland  the  highway  replaced  the  Indian  trail. 
Westward  past  the  Lakes,  across  the  Mississippi, 
westward  still.  In  our  own  times  in  the  far 
hunting  grounds  of  Cheyenne  and  Arapahoe 
have  gone  up  flames  from  burning  communal 
lodges,  and  the  cry  of.  savages  whose  blood  was 
being  spilled.  It  is  seventy  years  since  it  sounded 
on  the  Mississippi,  a  century  since  it  sounded  on 
the  western  slope  of  the  Alleghanies,  two  thou- 
sand years,  perhaps,  since  western  Europe  heard 
it.  And  so  backward  to  that  mysterious  primeval 
home  the  hills  have  blazed  with  conflagration,  the 
ravines  have  echoed  cries  of  anguish,  the  streams 
have  been  dyed  red  with  massacre  along  the  Aryan 
track.  The  cry  will  grow  still,  the  blaze  die 
down,  the  stream  run  pure  from  its  blood-stain ; 
but  to-day  the  Aryan  pioneer  steps  forward,  as  he 
always  has  stepped  forward,  over  graves. 

The  course  of  Aryan  conquest  only  illustrates 


1492]     THE  SURVIVAL  OF  THE  FITTEST        23 


•• 


the  great  universal  law  that  in  the  struggle  for 
life  the  fittest  must  survive.  It  is  a  tragic  story, 
that  of  the  displacement  of  the  aboriginal  race  of 
America  ;  but  it  ought  not  to  be  lost  sight  of  that 
what  the  tribes  of  this  valley  endured  from  their 
European  foes  bore  no  comparison  to  the  suffer- 
ings which  the  tribes  inflicted  upon  each  other. 
Take  the  worst  of  the  enormities  committed  by 
the  whites  and  compare  them  with  the  extermina- 
tion of  the  Illinois  by  the  Six  Nations  of  which  La 
Salle  was  a  witness,  or  the  destruction  of  the  Hu- 
rons  described  in  the  "  Jesuit  Relations,"  events 
which  were  only  in  the  ordinary  course  of  savage 
warfare,  and  the  contrast  is  great  indeed.  It  is 
confidently  asserted  that  the  number  of  Indians 
in  America  has  not  decreased,  that  while  the 
tribes  have  been  shifted  to  reservations  and  new 
territories  they  have  really  not  become  less  nu- 
merous ;  that  in  some  instances  they  have  multi- 
plied under  the  peaceful  conditions  of  the  later 
era.  It  is  not  beyond  hope  that  they  may  rise  in 
the  scale  and  take  a  place  among  civilized  men. 
As  to  spirit  and  energy  their  fire  is  not  quenched. 
On  Soldiers'  Field  at  Harvard,  at  Yale,  at  Colum- 
bia, at  Princeton,  where  the  flower  of  American 
youth  exhibit  in  competitive  struggle  the  best  that 
can  be  brought  to  bear  of  litheness  and  strength 
of  body,  of  swiftness  of  mind  as  well,  the  Car- 
lisle Indians  are  formidable  rivals. 

Though  the   general   direction   of   the   Aryan 


24      THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS    [1519 

advance  was  from  the  east,  the  Mississippi  Valley 
was  entered  from  every  other  quarter  of  the  com- 
pass before  it  was  entered  from  the  east.  The 
first  approach  was  from  the  south  ;  almost  at  once 
vigorous  expeditions  struck  in  from  the  west ; 
somewhat  later  the  basin  was  assailed  from  the 
north.  Not  until  it  had  been  often  traversed  and 
thoroughly  mapped  did  a  stream  of  European 
immigration  come  through  the  Alleghanies  by  the 
path  which  was  really  most  direct. 

The  first  Europeans  who  sailed  on  the  river  and 
trod  the  valley  were  the  Spaniards,  who,  having 
possessed  the  great  outlying  islands,  proceeded  to 
the  continent.  In  1519,  just  as  Cortez  was  found- 
ing Vera  Cruz,  Alvarez  de  Pineda,  turning  back 
from  there,  entered  the  mouth  of  a  great  river  to 
which  he  gave  the  name  Rio  de  Santo  Espiritu. 
He  breasted  the  current,  or  lay  at  anchor,  for  six 
weeks,  finding  one  large  Indian  town  and  some 
forty  hamlets,  with  whose  people  he  traded.  How 
far  he  ascended  cannot  be  told.  Nine  years  later 
Panfilo  de  Narvaez,  commissioned  to  explore  and 
govern  the  north  shore  of  the  Gulf,  leaving  Cuba 
with  iour  hundred  men  and  eighty  horses  con- 
veyed in  four  ships,  landed  at  Apalache  Bay  near 
the  western  end  of  what  is  now  Florida.  Being 
unable  to  regain  his  ships,  he  made  his  way  west- 
ward along  the  coast,  building  five  frail  boats. 
He  reached  at  last  the  mouths  of  a  great  river 
whose  flood  seemed  to  freshen  the  sea.  Here  fur- 


1528]  THE  FIRST  NEGRO  25 

ther  disasters  occurred.  Part  of  his  boats  cap- 
sizing, Narvaez  himself  was  lost.  A  few  of  the 
party  reached  the  shore,  but  only  four  finally  sur- 
vived. Of  these,  three  were  Spaniards,  and  the 
fourth  a  person  upon  whom  it  is  quite  worth  while 
to  dwell  for  a  moment.  He  was  a  negro,  the  first 
of  his  race  to  reach  the  valley,  contemporary  thus 
with  the  earliest  Europeans  in  the  region  in  which 
the  two  races  were  henceforth  to  dwell  together, 
a  conjunction  so  fateful  to  both.  The  negro's 
name  was  Estevanico,  "  Little  Steve  ; "  and  mea- 
gre as  the  record  of  him  is,  it  affords  some  grounds 
for  a  guess  that  the  diminutive  fell  to  him  because 
he  was  a  jolly  character  made  a  pet  of  by  his  fel- 
lows, rather  than  because  he  was  small  of  stature. 
Little  Steve,  as  things  turned  out,  became  one  of 
the  most  remarkable  of  American  explorers, 
though  he  could  not  set  down  what  he  saw  and 
underwent.  He  and  his  companions,  captured 
again  and  again  by  the  Indians,  roamed  far  and 
wide,  at  first  through  western  Louisiana  and 
eastern  Texas.  They  were  treated  well,  and  held 
in  awe  as  medicine  men,  the  strange  black  skin 
perhaps  proving  a  passport  to  favor.  At  last 
they  were  carried  up  the  Rio  Grande,  and  thence 
across  to  the  Gulf  of  California.  They  turned  up 
at  last  at  a  Spanish  post  in  Mexico  in  May,  1536. 
But  Little  Steve's  adventures  were  not  yet 
ended.  Fray  Marcos  de  Nizza,  a  Franciscan 
monk  who  had  had  a  South  American  experience 


26      THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS    [1536 

with  Pizarro,  being  commissioned  to  search  north- 
ward for  the  "  Seven  Cities  of  Cibola,"  of  which 
a  tradition  had  come  down,  took  for  his  compan- 
ion Little  Steve,  whose  life  of  eight  years  among 
the  tribes  had  no  doubt  made  him  an  expert  and 
interpreter  worth  having  at  hand.  As  the  party 
of  Fray  Marcos  proceeded  northward,  they  were 
well  received,  hearing  from  the  Indians  many 
stories  which  confirmed  their  belief  that  the  cities 
they  sought  were  not  far  off.  Towns  were  de- 
scribed containing  buildings  from  two  to  five 
stories  high,  whose  thresholds  were  set  with  tur- 
quoises ;  their  inhabitants  were  said  to  be  a  peo- 
ple well  clothed,  and  as  the  friar  judged  from  the 
reports,  possessed  of  much  refinement.  They  were 
in  fact  drawing  near  to  the  pueblos  of  the  Zunis  in 
New  Mexico,  at  the  present  day  to  some  extent 
preserved  and  inhabited.  Little  Steve  had  de- 
clined in  favor  with  the  priestly  leader,  who  had 
been  scandalized  by  freedoms  and  gayeties  which 
cavaliers  might  wink  at,  but  not  a  churchman. 
Fray  Marcos,  however,  as  they  approached  the 
first  pueblo,  sent  the  negro  forward,  as  better  fitted 
than  any  one,  to  prepare  the  way.  Little  Steve 
went  boldly,  displaying  his  gifts  and  his  retinue.' 
But  his  time  had  come.  The  Zunis  looked  askance 
upon  the  black  man,  refusing  him  admittance. 
Little  Steve  alarmed,  ran  off,  but  was  pursued  and 
slain  by  an  arrow.  Fray  Marcos,  terrified,  satis- 
fied himself  with  a  glimpse  from  a  distant  hill  of 


1540]  FRANCESCO  DE  CORONADO  27 

the  pueblo,  then  retreating,  made  his  report  to 
the  viceroy.  Most  interestingly,  the  Zunis  have 
preserved  to  this  day  the  tradition  of  the  visit  of 
Little  Steve,  their  legend  being  that  the  precursor 
of  the  first  white  man  was  a  black  Mexican,  who 
came  to  their  first  pueblo.  He  was  bold,  cheerful 
and  ready,  but  the  people  distrusted  and  killed 
him.  Afterwards  numbers  came,  and  the  Zunis 
were  conquered. 

The  expedition  of  Fray  Marcos  de  Nizza  and 
Estevanico,  though  not  touching  fairly  the  Missis- 
sippi Basin,  deserves  the  mention  here  given,  as 
being  the  forerunner  of  the  more  memorable  march 
of  Francesco  de  Coronado,  a  well  born  cavalier 
whose  wife  was  reputed  to  be  a  granddaughter 
of  no  less  mighty  a  personage  than  Ferdinand  the 
Catholic.  In  the  spring  of  1540,  with  three  hun- 
dred Spaniards  and  eight  hundred  Indians,  Coro- 
nado struck  north  from  the  Pacific  coast,  visited 
the  pueblos,  described,  first  of  white  men,  the  Colo- 
rado Canon,  and  went  much  farther  eastward.  He 
penetrated  the  Mississippi  Basin,  without  doubt, 
though  it  is  quite  uncertain  how  far  he  may  have 
wandered.  He  is  believed  to  have  reached  the 
•south  fork  of  the  Platte,  and  quite  possibly  the 
boundary  line  between  Kansas  and  Nebraska. 
Some  of  his  parties,  for  he  sent  his  men  out  far 
and  wide,  may  even  have  attained  the  Missouri 
River,  somewhere  between  Kansas  City  and 
Omaha.  He  was  disgusted  at  finding  nothing  but 


28     THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS     [1540 

barbarism  ;  the  "  Seven  Cities  of  Cibola "  were 
as  unsubstantial  as  a  mirage.  He  returned  dis- 
appointed, after  two  years  of  most  energetic  ex- 
ploration, penetrating  the  Mississippi  Valley  by 
paths  which  to  this  day  are  unknown  and  difficult. 
He  met  only  with  disgrace  on  his  return,  being 
deprived  of  the  government  of  New  Galicia  which 
he  had  held.  It  is  believed  at  the  present  day 
that  not  one  of  the  great  path-breakers  that  fol- 
lowed him  in  laying  open  North  America,  whether 
French,  English,  or  American,  surpassed  this  in- 
trepid Castilian  in  the  boldness  and  scope  of  his 
enterprise. 

While  Coronado,  though  most  undeservedly  los- 
ing reputation,  yet  got  off  with  a  whole  skin, 
indeed  suffered  apparently  little  hardship,  the 
game  everywhere  being  abundant  and  the  Indians 
friendly  or  easily  subdued,  Fernando  de  Soto, 
who  at  the  same  time  was  in  the  field  in  another 
part  of  the  valley,  met  only  with  disaster  and  death. 
He  had  been  a  companion  of  Pizarro,  and  had  won 
in  Peru  great  wealth  and  reputation.  Thus  as 
governor  of  Cuba,  and  holding  the  supreme  rank 
of  adelantado,  he  obtained  a  patent  to  extensive 
lands  on  the  continent.  Crossing  to  Florida  with 
nearly  six  hundred  men  and  more  than  two  hundred 
horses,  he  landed  with  great  pomp  and  with  the 
highest  hopes.  The  best  blood  and  chivalry  of 
Spain  were  profusely  represented  in  his  ranks. 
With  unshrinking  courage  they  marched  north- 


1541]  FERNANDO   DE   SOTO  29 

ward  to  the  Savannah  River,  then  turned  west- 
ward. Showing  the  customary  Spanish  cruelty 
and  want  of  tact,  De  Soto  enraged  the  Indians 
and  at  the  same  time  was  disappointed  in  his 
search  for  gold.  The  expedition  pushed  on  with 
hardihood  across  what  is  now  Georgia,  Alabama, 
and  Mississippi.  At  the  junction  of  the  Alabama 
and  Tombigbee  rivers  a  great  battle  was  fought, 
no  doubt  with  Indians  whose  descendants  we  have 
known  as  Creeks.  Seventy  Spaniards  fell,  and 
many  horses  whose  loss  was  mourned  almost  as 
if  they  had  been  cavaliers.  Of  the  savages  the 
annalist  claims  the  destruction  of  twenty-five  hun- 
dred. Not  daunted,  De  Soto  continued  to  press 
westward,  until  in  the  fall  of  1541  he  reached  the 
Yazoo.  Next  spring,  striking  the  Mississippi,  he 
embarked  his  company  close  at  hand  probably  to 
Haines'  Bluff,  which  as  will  be  seen,  was  to  behold 
still  other  expeditions  after  three  hundred  years. 
Crossing  the  stream,  the  band  marched  fearlessly 
through  the  forest,  nearly  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Ohio.  His  search  still  proving  vain,  De  Soto 
returned  southward,  and  on  May  21,  1542,  worn 
out  with  wandering,  near  the  mouth  of  the 
Arkansas,  he  died,  and  was  buried  in  the  Mis- 
sissippi. It  was  the  most  romantic,  the  most 
important,  and  also  the  last  attempt  of  Spain  to 
discover  and  possess  the  land,  until  after  the  lapse 
of  two  hundred  years.  A  kindred  race,  after  an 
interval,  was  to  appear  on  the  scene,  destined  to 


30     THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS    [1543 

strive  for  mastery  with  even  greater  energy  ;  but 
destined  to  fail  also,  as  Spain  had  failed.  De 
Soto's  followers,  under  Luis  de  Moscoso,  after 
descending  the  Mississippi,  and  making  their  way 
along  the  coast  of  Texas,  reached,  diminished  by 
nearly  half,  the  town  of  Tampico,  September  16, 
1543.  The  exploring  and  colonizing  energy  of 
Spain  was  exhausted.  Before  the  end  of  the 
century  the  power  of  the  nation  was  broken  by 
its  own  intolerance.  Individuality  was  crushed 
out  by  the  Inquisition  until  character  and  spirit 
largely  disappeared.  As  John  Fiske  says,  the  sys- 
tem of  Spain  seemed  especially  adapted  to  bring 
to  pass  the  survival  of  the  unfittest.  Since  the 
time  of  Philip  II.  the  life  of  the  nation  has  been 
slowly  departing,  and  we,  at  the  close  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  have  beheld  one  of  the  most 
marked  and  memorable  phases  of  the  decline. 

The  chapter  of  Spanish  enterprise  having  closed, 
it  remained  for  another  great  Latin  race  to  play 
its  part.  As  the  Spaniards  had  tried  from  the 
south  and  west,  the  French  first  entered  the  val- 
ley far  to  the  north,  coming  up  from  Canada 
through  the  great  waterways.  The  rise  of  France 
was  coincident  with  Spanish  decay.  In  the  seven- 
teenth century  the  power  of  the  kings  was  con- 
firmed, Richelieu  contributing  to  the  might  of 
Louis  XIII.,  and  Louis  XIV.  acceding  to  a  dig- 
nity in  which  the  entire  power  of  the  state  was 
concentrated.  "  L'etat  c'est  moi."  France  became 


1630]  FRENCH  ACHIEVEMENT  31 

a  world-power  as  never  before,  and  her  vigor 
affected  greatly  the  western  continent.  A  secure 
foothold  having  been  early  gained  in  Canada,  she 
pushed  constantly  farther  west,  the  French  much 
preferring  the  roving  life  of  hunters  and  explorers 
to  the  cultivation  of  the  soil  in  fixed  settlements. 
They  adapted  themselves  with  remarkable  facility 
to  Indian  ways,  sinking  themselves  sometimes  al- 
most into  Indians.  The  voyageurs  and  coureurs 
de  bois  danced  the  war-dance,  whistled  through 
the  wing-bone  of  the  eagle  to  keep  off  thunder- 
storms, learned  the  most  elaborate  modulations  of 
the  war-whoop,  —  thus  in  ferocity,  superstition,  and 
general  savagery  becoming  scarcely  distinguishable 
from  the  wildest  men.  They  mated  with  savage 
women  until  every  tribe  with  which  they  came  in 
contact  was  dashed  with  French  blood.  Compan- 
ions, often  precursors,  of  the  most  daring  adven- 
turers were  the  black-robed  Jesuit  missionaries. 
If  the  traders  and  hunters  showed  little  tenacity, 
giving  up  readily  such  civilization  as  they  had 
possessed,  not  so  the  priests;  they  held  to  the 
faith,  and  with  fanatical  persistence  and  courage 
pressed  it,  encountering  cheerfully,  for  its  spread, 
the  extremest  torture  and  even  martyrdom. 

As  we  enter  now  on  the  splendid  story  of  French 
achievement  in  the  Mississippi  Valley,  it  will  be 
well  to  consider  for  a  moment  the  paths  into  the 
wilderness  by  which  they  came.  The  obvious 
route,  of  course,  was  by  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the 


32     THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS    [1630 

Lakes ;  though  at  an  early  time  the  difficult  pas- 
sage by  the  rapid-broken  Ottawa,  thence  through 
the  French  River  to  what  is  now  Georgian  Bay  in 
Lake  Huron,  was  often  followed.  The  shores  of 
Lake  Superior  were  early  traced,  and  probably 
the  trails  stretching  westward  toward  the  Lake  of 
the  Woods  were  by  no  means  unknown.  A  much 
more  famous  and  frequented  approach  was  that 
by  Green  Bay.  Starting  here,  a  short  passage 
up  the  lower  Fox,  broken  by  rapids,  carried  the 
adventurer  into  Lake  Winnebago;  thence  the 
upper  Fox  led  to  the  narrow  portage  where  the 
Wisconsin  could  be  reached ;  sometimes  it  was 
scarcely  necessary  to  lift  the  canoe  out  of  the 
water,  the  lowlands  covered  with  wild  rice  becom- 
ing for  the  time  a  shallow  lake.  At  the  southern 
end  of  Lake  Michigan,  on  the  western  side,  the 
Chekalcou  afforded  an  entrance  to  the  Illinois 
country ;  a  narrow  portage,  sometimes  flooded 
until  it  offered  no  obstacle,  as  in  the  previous  case, 
alone  barring  the  way  to  a  broad  affluent  of  the 
Mississippi.  Again,  on  the  eastern  side  of  the 
lake,  by  going  up  the  St.  Joseph,  a  point  could 
be  reached  where  one  could  easily  transfer  him- 
self to  the  Kankakee,  a  stream  black  and  wind- 
ing, traversing  swamps  by  a  current  scarcely 
perceptible,  but  delivering  its  waters  and  all  that 
floated  on  them  in  due  time  to  the  Great  River. 
Farther  east,  near  the  western  end  of  Lake  Erie, 
the  head-streams  of  the  Maumee  interlocked  with 


1634]  THE  OLD  WATERWAYS  33 

those  of  the  Wabash.  Still  farther  east  by  the 
Cuyahoga  the  Muskingum  could  be  approached. 
Lastly,  from  Presqu'  Isle  the  peninsula  which  now 
shelters  the  harbor  of  Erie,  in  the  domain  of  the 
Senecas  watching  at  the  western  gate  of  the  Six 
Nations,  a  short  carry  was  enough  to  convey  bark 
and  burden  to  the  rills  which  form  presently  the  Al- 
leghany,  a  river  reaching  the  Mississippi  through 
the  Ohio,  after  a  course  of  a  thousand  miles. 
These  historic  waterways  still  persist,  flowing  on 
forever,  though  men  may  come  and  men  may 
go.  In  some  cases  the  circumstances  are  greatly 
changed.  The  old  Chekakou  is  now  marked  by 
a  city  of  two  millions;  and  the  little  primitive 
currents,  manipulated  by  wonderful  engineering, 
have  been  utilized  for  a  "  drainage  canal,"  a  work 
so  colossal  as  almost  to  change  the  water-shed  of 
a  vast  area,  making  the  Lakes  discharge  to  the 
Gulf,  as  in  pre-glacial  times.  In  the  case  of  others, 
however,  the  wilderness  still  to  a  large  extent  per- 
sists ;  and  canoe-men  of  to-day  who  have  become 
imbued  and  fascinated  with  the  old  stories,  like 
Mr.  Eeuben  Gold  Thwaites,1  track  the  pathfinders 
from  camping-ground  to  camping-ground. 

The  French  were  within  easy  reach  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi as  early  as  1634,  in  which  year  the  trader, 
Jean  Nicolet  at  Green  Bay,  dressing  up  in  a  Chi- 
nese robe  of  flowered  silk,  and  firing  off  pistols, 
awed  the  Indians  into  friendship.  He  reached 

1  Historic  Waterways,  by  R.  G.  Thwaites. 


34     THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS     [1673 

the  Fox  River,  and  might  easily  have  gone  on  to 
the  "  great  water  "  which  he  heard  of  as  being  not 
far  beyond,  and  which  he  supposed  was  the  Paci- 
fic Ocean.  He  turned  back,  however,  to  the  Que- 
bec neighborhood,  being  a  guest  not  long  after  at 
the  wedding  of  the  wagon-maker,  Joliet.  The  Mis- 
sissippi was  to  remain  a  mystery  until  Louis  Joliet, 
a  son  of  that  marriage,  had  grown  to  manhood. 
Father  Allouez  also  at  his  mission  at  the  Apostle 
Islands,  at  Chequamagon  Bay,  of  Lake  Superior, 
heard  from  the  Sioux  of  the  Messepi,  but  did 
not  go  thither.  Radisson  and  Groseilliers,  fur- 
traders,  actually  reached  the  river  in  1655. 
Jacques  Marquette,  companion  and  successor  of 
Allouez,  having  become  familiar  with  the  Sault 
Sainte  Marie,  with  the  district  of  Allouez,  and 
with  the  island  of  Michilimackinac,  resolved  to 
go  farther.  Leaving  the  mission  of  St.  Ignace, 
which  he  had  established  opposite  Mackinac,  with 
Joliet  for  a  companion,  the  son  of  the  wagon- 
maker,  on  May  17,  1673,  he  set  out  for  the 
great  water  of  which  so  much  had  been  heard,  but 
which  was  still  so  uncertain.  The  passage  to  the 
"Baie  des  Puans,"  as  the  French  called  Green 
Bay,  was  short.  The  lower  Fox  was  ascended, 
the  explorers  carrying  their  canoes  on  their  shoul- 
ders about  the  rapids  :  the  tranquil  expanse  of 
Lake  Winnebago  and  the  upper  Fox  offered  little 
hindrance.  Once  over  the  portage,  the  Wiscon- 
sin, at  flood,  bore  them  on  smoothly,  until  one  day 


1675.]         MARQUETTE  AND  LA  SALLE  35 

in  the  early  summer  they  saw  the  sun  set  beyond 
the  stream  which  had  been  a  mystery  since  the 
burial  of  De  Soto,  a  century  and  a  quarter  before. 
Marquette  found  the  Indians  friendly.  Said  a 
chief,  shading  his  eyes  as  if  from  too  great  light : 
"  How  bright  the  sun  shines  when  the  French  visit 
our  country !  "  They  floated  down  to  the  mouth 
of  the  Arkansas,  satisfying  themselves  that  the 
river  did  not  flow  into  the  Pacific.  Thence  they 
returned ;  the  trader  to  persist  in  his  wandering, 
the  priest  to  resume  his  work,  until  dying  in  his 
prime  by  a  forest-stream,  his  body  was  laid  under 
the  chapel  at  St.  Ignace,  where  he  had  minis- 
tered. 

A  still  more  noteworthy  figure  in  the  line  of  the 
great  pathfinders  now  stepped  upon  the  scene. 
Robert  Cavelier,  Sieur  de  La  Salle,  was  born  of  a 
noble  family  of  Rouen,  and  obtaining  from  the 
king  the  grant  of  a  seigneurie,  he  embarked  early 
for  the  new  world.  Like  so  many  of  the  early 
adventurers,  he  dreamed  of  a  northwest  passage 
to  the  Orient  until  the  world  laughed  at  him. 
Obtaining  a  grant  just  above  Montreal,  where  the 
St.  Lawrence  in  its  broken  course  throws  itself 
for  the  last  time  over  the  ledges,  the  people  called 
it  La  Chine.  It  was  the  only  China  he  was  des- 
tined to  reach,  though  his  foot  pressed  far  on  the 
road  which  two  centuries  later,  has  been  found  to 
be  the  most  direct  way  thither.  In  his  portrait 
his  face,  the  eye  keen,  the  nose  strongly  aquiline, 


36     THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS      [1679 

is  marked  by  manly  energy  and  an  air  of  high 
breeding.  He  is  said  to  have  been  in  disposition 
cold  and  haughty,  and  during  his  career  constantly 
stirred  up  violent  enmities,  the  consequence  of  one 
being  his  death  at  last.  But  he  was  a  man  of  iron 
nerve  and  persistency,  whom  no  misfortune  could 
daunt ;  one  of  the  foremost  of  the  brave  and  bril- 
liant race  who  came  so  near  to  the  possession  of 
the  new  world. 

Frontenac,  the  most  picturesque  of  the  French 
governors,  at  one  time  a  figure  robed  in  velvet 
and  lace  reflected  from  the  mirrors  of  the  Galerie 
des  Glaces,  at  Versailles,  at  another  time  painted 
and  plumed  to  dance  the  war-dance  with  savages 
in  the  heart  of  the  wilderness,  recognized  in  La 
Salle  a  valuable  instrument;  the  Indians,  too, 
felt  his  masterful  character  and  gave  way  to  him 
readily.  Early  in  his  career  he  is  believed  to 
have  discovered  the  Ohio,  though  no  definite  re- 
cord of  it  remains.  But  it  is  well  known  that,  in 
1679,  he  landed  on  the  bank  of  the  Niagara,  just 
where  the  lower  Whirlpool  Rapids  flow  into  calm 
water,  and  climbed  with  his  men  the  high  ridge, 
where  the  cataract,  ages  ago,  began  its  task  of  cut- 
ting backward.  Making  his  way  with  his  packs 
past  the  Falls  and  the  Gorge  for  six  miles,  he 
pitched  his  camp  among  the  reeds,  the  line  of 
surge  just  visible  below  that  marked  the  first 
plunge  of  the  river  toward  its  gulf.  Here,  at  a 
spot  now  called  by  his  name,  he  built  the  Griffin, 


1680]  LA   SALLE   AND   TONTI  37 

the  first  ship  to  sail  the  Lakes,  embarking  in  which 
he  made  his  way  to  the  St.  Joseph's  River.  From 
here  the  party  passed  to  the  Illinois,  on  which  he 
built  Fort  Crevecreur.  In  March,  1680,  La  Salle, 
left  the  little  stockade  in  command  of  Henri  de 
Tonti,  his  brave  and  faithful  lieutenant,  son  of  the 
Italian  financier  from  whom  we  derive  the  word 
tontine,  a  personage  only  less  interesting  than  La 
Salle  himself.  Tonti's  commanding  qualities  were 
curiously  reinforced,  for  the  work  he  was  set  to  do, 
by  a  certain  defect ;  he  had  lost  one  hand  by  ac- 
cident, and  had  in  place  of  it  an  iron  hook.  This, 
among  the  Indians  was  a  great  "  medicine,"  lend- 
ing to  the  maimed  Tonti  a  prestige  which,  proba- 
bly more  than  made  good  his  misfortune.  La 
Salle  himself  returned  to  the  lake  to  await  the 
Griffin,  which  had  gone  back  to  Niagara  for  sup- 
plies. The  ship,  however,  was  never  heard  of 
after.  Tired  of  waiting  at  last,  La  Salle  with 
four  Frenchmen  and  a  Mohegan  guide,  set  out 
to  reach  Montreal  on  foot.  Arriving  after  great 
hardships  at  Niagara,  he  met  only  bad  news. 
Besides  the  loss  of  the  Griffin,  a  ship  from 
France  belonging  to  him,  with  freight  valued  at 
twenty  thousand  livres,  had  been  wrecked  in  the 
lower  St.  Lawrence  with  a  loss  of  everything. 
Taking  three  fresh  men  La  Salle  went  on  to  Mont- 
real, whence  after  obtaining  reinforcements  and 
supplies,  he  started  back  nothing  daunted. 

La  Salle' s  ill-luck,  however,  was  not  broken. 


38     THE   COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS     [1681 

At  Fort  Frontenac,  where  the  St.  Lawrence  flows 
from  Lake  Ontario,  he  heard  of  a  mutiny  at  Fort 
Crevecoaur.  Having  pulled  the  fort  to  pieces,  the 
mutineers,  abandoning  Tonti,  had  made  their  way 
to  Niagara,  which  post  they  also  destroyed.  The 
word  was  that  the  mutineers,  with  their  plunder, 
were  making  their  way  down  the  lake,  hoping  to 
meet  and  murder  La  Salle.  By  prompt  action, 
on  the  other  hand,  La  Salle  captured  them,  and 
sent  them  in  chains  to  the  viceroy,  Frontenac. 
Then  he  pursued  his  journey  to  find  the  Illinois 
country  a  scene  of  devastation.  The  Iroquois, 
tigers  of  the  human  race,  "  the  scourge  of  God 
upon  the  wilderness,"  now  at  the  height  of  their 
power  and  activity,  had  been  there,  inflicting  a 
slaughter  which  scarcely  fell  short  of  extermina- 
tion. Seeking  Tonti,  whom  he  had  left  in  charge, 
La  Salle  followed  the  Illinois  to  the  Mississippi. 
He  returned  unsuccessful,  for  the  resolute  Tonti, 
with  the  little  band  that  had  been  faithful  to  him 
during  the  mutiny,  forced  to  abandon  his  ruined 
fort,  had  made  his  way  northward  along  the  shore 
of  Lake  Michigan  to  Green  Bay,  well  out  of  the 
danger.  Nothing  was  left  in  the  Illinois  country 
but  ash-heaps  and  skeletons,  where  had  stood  the 
populous  villages.  La  Salle's  heart  rose  to  the 
situation.  Rallying  as  he  could  the  tribes  to 
the  right  and  left,  he  sought  to  inspirit  them  on 
the  basis  of  enmity  to  the  Iroquois. 

In  May,  1681,  he  set  out  again  for  Canada,  pur- 


1682,]  LOUISIANA  39 

suing  a  more  northerly  route  than  before,  on  which, 
somewhere  near  Green  Bay  or  Mackinac,  he  en- 
countered Tonti  whom  he  confirmed  in  his  attach- 
ment. He  paddled  a  thousand  miles  to  Fort 
Frontenac  again ;  and  ever  restless  and  uncon- 
quered,  made  a  new  start  in  the  fall,  from  which 
at  last  came  success.  Reaching  the  Illinois  by 
routes  now  well  known,  he  followed  it  to  the  Mis- 
sissippi and  proceeded  to  surpass  the  achievement 
of  Marquette,  eight  years  before.  He  pushed  be- 
yond the  mouth  of  the  Arkansas,  down  and  still 
down,  his  boats  at  last  floating  out  of  one  of  the 
passes  into  the  Gulf  of  Mexico.  Of  Alonzo  de 
Pineda,  and  Panfilo  de  Narvaez,  not  to  speak  of 
the  far-wandering  "  Little  Steve,"  his  predecessors 
by  one  hundred  and  forty  years,  scarcely  a  tradi- 
tion remained.  Heedless  of  the  Spanish  preoccu- 
pation, on  the  9th  of  April,  1682,  he  planted  the 
banner  of  thefleur  de  Us  to  establish  the  claim  of 
France,  and  bestowed  upon  the  country  the  me- 
morable name  Louisiana. 

La  Salle,  on  his  return,  which  took  place  at 
once,  built  in  the  Illinois  country  Fort  St.  Louis, 
a  more  substantial  post  than  the  former  one ;  leav- 
ing this  in  Tonti's  hands,  traversing  the  wilder- 
ness still  again,  he  set  sail  from  Quebec  for  France. 
Exchanging  his  deerskin  dress  for  the  silk  attire 
of  a  courtier,  he  bent  the  knees,  so  sturdy  through 
continental  journeyings,  by  the  chair  of  the  great 
Louis  ;  and  modulating  the  voice  grown  stern  and 


40     THE  COMING  OF  THE   EUROPEANS     [1687 

powerful  through  wilderness  shoutings,  to  the 
tone  of  a  humble  petitioner,  he  begged  for  means 
to  possess  the  great  country  he  had  found.  The 
king  had  a  liking  for  brave  men,  and  the  plea  of 
La  Salle  proved  persuasive.  In  due  time  a  fleet 
was  despatched  with  men  and  means  for  a  set- 
tlement at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi ;  and  a 
line  of  posts  was  projected  to  extend  thence  to 
the  fortresses  of  Canada. 

But  luck,  which  for  a  time  had  smiled,  again 
grew  frowning.  Through  the  incompetency  or 
misfortune  of  Beaujeu,  commander  of  the  fleet, 
the  mouth  of  the  river  was  missed,  and  of  the  fine 
expedition,  some  of  the  ships  passing  to  the  west 
were  wrecked  on  the  coast.  With  the  rest  Beaujeu 
sailed  away,  leaving  La  Salle,  in  one  of  the  wrecks, 
to  his  fate.  The  ill-fated  hero  reaching  land  with 
a  few  other  survivors,  wandered  lost  for  two  years. 
In  March,  1687,  the  end  came  for  him.  Still  hop- 
ing to  reach  the  Mississippi,  on  which  he  trusted 
to  find  means  to  make  his  way  up  to  Tonti,  on  the 
Illinois,  he  started  out  on  foot,  but  was  shot  from 
ambush  by  some  of  his  followers.  One  feels  in 
reading  the  story  of  La  Salle,  that  there  must  have 
been  in  him  some  marked  unainiability  to  account 
for  the  steady  treachery  and  hatred  which  beset 
his  path  from  first  to  last,  whether  he  had  to  do 
with  high  or  low.  For  all  the  qualities  of  rugged 
manhood  however,  courage,  persistency  that  could 
not  be  broken,  contempt  of  pain  and  hardship,  in 


LA  SALLE 


1680]          HENNEPIN'S  EXPLORATIONS  41 

the  story  of  America  he  has  never  been  surpassed, 
and  seldom  paralleled. 

Although  among  the  churchmen  it  was  the 
Jesuits  who  played  by  far  the  larger  part  in 
attempts  to  explore  and  christianize  America, 
they  were  not  alone.  The  Franciscans,  known 
also  as  Recollets,  were  also  active  until  the  jeal- 
ousy of  their  black-robed  rivals  drove  them  out. 
Their  garb  was  the  coarse  gray  robe  of  St.  Francis, 
girt  about  the  waist  with  a  knotted  cord.  One,  at 
least,  among  them  had  a  career  as  picturesque 
and  full  of  adventure  as  that  of  any  Jesuit.  In 
the  train  of  La  Salle,  when  he  built  the  Griffin 
on  the  Niagara,  and  made  the  voyage  to  the  port- 
age from  Lake  Michigan  to  the  Illinois,  was  the 
Belgian  Father,  Louis  de  Hennepin,  who,  at  Fort 
Crevecoeur,  received  a  commission  from  La  Salle 
to  undertake  an  independent  expedition.  Henne- 
pin set  out  at  the  end  of  February,  1680,  with 
two  companions,  to  explore  the  Illinois  to  its 
mouth.  They  were  captured  about  the  middle  of 
April  by  a  party  of  Sioux,  whom,  after  undergo- 
ing much  terror,  they  had  the  address  to  propi- 
tiate. A  pocket  compass  which  the  Father  car- 
ried seemed  to  the  Indians  great  medicine,  and 
under  the  idea  that  a  touch  of  the  supernatural 
characterized  them,  their  captors  treated  them 
well,  Hennepin  being  adopted  by  a  chief  and 
held  in  high  esteem.  In  this  company  Hennepin 
ascended  to  the  Falls  of  St.  Anthony,  wandering 


42     THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS     [1697 

widely  also  in  Minnesota.  Thus  he  covered  a 
part  of  the  river  which  Marquette  had  not  trav- 
ersed, and  was  the  first  European  to  give  a  clear 
account  of  the  great  Northwest.  He  was  not  the 
first  white  man  to  visit  this  region,  for  fur-traders 
had  reached  the  upper  Mississippi  as  early  as  1655. 
Escaping  at  last,  Hennepin  made  his  way  to  Mont- 
real, and  thence  to  France,  where  he  published 
an  interesting  account  of  his  adventures.  The 
Indian  life  is  graphically  depicted;  and  though 
the  foibles  of  the  Father  are  very  apparent,  it  is 
plain  that  he  met  the  exigencies  of  a  hard  situa- 
tion with  resolution  and  skill.  His  drawings  are 
curious,  and  sometimes  surprisingly  accurate.  His 
map,  also,  giving  the  whole  territory  east  of  the 
Mississippi  to  the  Atlantic  and  the  Gulf,  is  cor- 
rect to  a  remarkable  degree.  The  coast-line,  for 
a  rough  delineation,  is  fairly  accurate ;  the  course 
of  the  Mississippi  from  source  to  mouth  is  sub- 
stantially the  true  one.  Although  the  Great  Lakes 
are  grotesque  in  size  and  shape,  besides  crowding 
too  much  the  valley  of  the  Ohio,  one  feels  that 
the  old  friar  caught  with  wonderful  quickness  the 
topography  of  the  regions  into  which  he  pene- 
trated. 

In  1697,  when  La  Salle  had  been  dead  ten 
years,  Hennepin  published  a  second  lying  narra- 
tive, in  which  he  declared  that  before  his  capture 
by  the  Sioux  he  went  down  the  Mississippi  to  its 
mouth  and  returned,  romancing  about  his  experi- 


1699]  IBERVILLE  43 

ences  during  his  fabricated  excursion.  Though 
La  Salle  was  not  alive  to  contradict  him,  his  tale 
was  not  believed.  His  credit  departed  even  in 
his  lifetime,  and  his  is  but  a  tarnished  name  in 
our  early  story. 

La  Salle  had  conceived  that  the  fur  trade,  the 
most  important  trade  of  New  France,  might  be 
carried  on  to  better  advantage  from  the  mouth  of 
the  Mississippi  than  from  Montreal  and  Quebec. 
This,  no  doubt,  he  had  purposed  to  demonstrate, 
had  not  premature  ruin  befallen  him ;  but  before 
the  century  ended  another  Frenchman  came  for- 
ward to  take  up  his  work.  Iberville  was  of  Cana- 
dian extraction,  and  in  early  manhood  had  become 
known  through  exploits  in  Hudson's  Bay.  Turn- 
ing from  the  far  north,  he  had  interest  enough  to 
be  able  to  gather  in  France  two  hundred  emi- 
grants, men,  women,  and  children,  who  embarked 
in  a  small  fleet,  June,  1698,  and,  convoyed  by 
the  Francois  of  fifty  guns,  reached  Louisiana 
in  the  spring  of  1699.  Not  far  from  the  river 
they  established  their  settlement  to  the  eastward, 
thus  founding  a  new  colony.  The  Spaniards, 
inactive  since  the  days  of  De  Soto,  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  before,  were  still  close  at 
hand  both  east  and  west,  —  in  the  West  Indies, 
Florida  and  Mexico ;  and  a  party  of  them  now 
appeared  at  Biloxi,  close  by,  protesting  against 
the  violation  of  their  territory.  But  the  French 
were  not  disconcerted.  Iberville  remained  among 


44     THE  COMING  OF  THE   EUROPEANS    [1720 

them  until  1702,  causing  the  roots  of  his  colony 
to  strike  deep,  then  went  back  to  France  never  to 
return.  His  successor  was  his  brother  Bienville, 
scarcely  beyond  boyhood,  but  possessed  of  much 
prudence  and  tenacity,  who  guided  the  fortunes  of 
the  colony  until  far  along  in  the  century. 

As  the  eighteenth  century  progressed,  the  en- 
ergy of  France  showed  no  diminution ;  explorers 
as  bold  as  their  predecessors  continued  the  work. 
Before  1700  Le  Sueur  had  ascended  the  Mis^is- 
sippi  from  its  mouth  to  Minnesota.  Juchereau 
and  La  Harpe,  in  the  southwest,  before  1720, 
had  penetrated  far  into  the  country  about  the 
Red  and  Arkansas  Rivers.  About  the  same  time 
du  Tisne,  ascending  by  the  Missouri,  struck  across 
through  the  Osages  to  the  Pawnees;  and  soon 
after  Bourgmont  made  his  way  to  the  Comanches. 
Somewhat  later  the  brothers  Mallet  reached  the 
south  fork  of  the  Platte,  and  crossing  Coronado's 
track  reached  Santa  Fe*  through  Colorado,  return- 
ing down  the  Arkansas. 

The  heroic  line  may  be  said  to  close  with  the 
family  of  La  Verendrye  which  nobly  sustained  the 
credit  of  the  lilies.  A  lieutenant  of  the  regiment 
Carignan-Salieres,  a  body  of  regular  French  troops 
which  did  fine  service  in  the  new  country,  marry- 
ing a  girl  of  the  colony,  and  being  established  in  a 
post  of  danger  on  the  Iroquois  frontier,  became 
parent  of  a  numerous  family,  after  the  Canadian 
fashion.  One  son  went  to  France,  held  a  commis- 


1742]        THE  WESTWARD  MOVEMENT  45 

sion  in  the  army,  and  at  Malplaquet,  after  being 
shot  through  the  body  and  receiving  six  sabre-cuts, 
was  left  for  dead  on  that  terrible  field.  He  lived 
to  return  to  America,  however,  and  with  body  and 
spirit  unbroken,  founded  posts  and  traveled  far 
and  wide  north  and  west  of  Lake  Superior,  in 
Minnesota,  North  Dakota,  and  modern  Manitoba. 
He  took  with  him  into  the  woods  two  sons  of  his 
own  fibre,  who  even  went  beyond  their  father. 
Striking  westward  in  the  hope  of  reaching  the 
Pacific,  of  which  they  constantly  heard  from 
Sioux  and  Assiniboins,  the  savages  with  whom 
they  lived,  they  reached  the  upper  Missouri,  at 
the  country  of  the  Mandans.  Hence  they  pene- 
trated still  farther  along  the  path  followed  sixty- 
two  years  later  by  Lewis  and  Clark,  fairly  reach- 
ing, in  1742,  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Like  so 
many  of  their  predecessors,  father  and  sons  re- 
ceived neither  acknowledgment  nor  reward,  dying 
in  obscurity  and  poverty. 

While  the  pioneers  thus  pushed  westward,  the 
area  of  the  basin  behind  them  became  during  the 
first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  well  ascertained 
and  mapped.  France  had  the  field  to  herself  ;  as 
yet  the  English  had  not  found  the  valley ;  and 
though  the  Spaniards  were  not  far  off,  in  Florida 
and  Mexico,  and  regarded  the  French  as  interlop- 
ers, Spain  fallen  into  decadence  could  easily  be 
reckoned  with.  The  vast  country  was  far  enough 
from  being  occupied.  Stockade  forts  held  by  a 


46     THE   COMING  OF  THE   EUROPEANS    [1750 

few  men  guarded  generally  the  portages  by  which 
it  was  possible  to  penetrate  from  the  Lakes.  In 
the  way  of  settlement  three  little  groups  assem- 
bled, one  named  Vincennes,  on  the  Wabash,  with 
a  few  tributary  hamlets ;  one  at  Kaskaskia,  in  the 
Illinois  country,  which  also  had  its  outlying  vil- 
lages ;  and  most  important  of  all,  New  Orleans, 
with  the  villages  and  plantations  scattered  among 
the  bayous  and  swamps.  To  these  little  nuclei  of 
civilization,  the  great  river,  or  some  affluent  of  it, 
close  at  hand,  afforded  a  highway.  Log-cabins 
with  broad  verandas  stood  irregularly  along  the 
village  street,  the  interstices  plastered  with  clay, 
the  chimneys  standing  outside.  In  each  little 
centre  the  priest  and  the  notary  took  care  of  reli- 
gion and  civil  order,  officials  quite  adequate  in  the 
simple  society.  To  some  extent  the  clearing  off  of 
the  dark  overshadowing  forest  went  forward  and 
there  was  a  certain  small  amount  of  tillage ;  but 
the  men  were  far  more  prone  to  hunt  and  trade, 
than  to  chop  and  delve.  The  simple  housekeep- 
ing taxed  the  women  but  little ;  the  skins  of  beasts, 
with  blankets  and  fabrics  brought  now  and  then 
across  the  portages  or  up  the  river,  sufficed  for 
clothing.  A  crucifix,  the  hide  of  a  black  bear 
nailed  against  the  logs,  or  a  pair  of  antlers,  gave 
decoration.  Life  was  in  a  high  degree  social  and 
genial ;  christenings  and  weddings,  the  planting, 
the  harvest,  the  husking,  saints'  days,  —  every 
possible  occasion  was  made  a  festival.  The  fiddle 


1750]  FRENCH  CIVILIZATION  47 

squeaked  and  the  dancing  was  long  and  boister- 
ous. The  French  knew  how  to  fight  Indians, 
none  better ;  but  the  bond  between  the  races  was 
often  fraternal,  and  in  every  settlement  plumed 
and  painted  braves  lounged  about,  much  at  home. 
In  the  life  there  was  a  curious  blending  of  com- 
plete despotism  and  wild  individual  freedom  run- 
ning out  into  license.  Not  a  soul  would  have 
dared  to  stand  against  the  slightest  nod  of  the 
great  Louis,  or  his  representative,  the  military 
commandant,  or  the  intendant  who  superintended 
the  traffic.  That  authority  once  recognized  how- 
ever, there  was  little  interference  with  the  daily 
doings  of  men  or  women,  who  went  and  came, 
played,  hunted,  bartered,  fought  as  they  pleased, 
or  more  rarely  engaged  in  fitful  labor.  The  sys- 
tem was  a  complete  paternalism  in  which  the 
authority  of  the  head  was  unquestioned  ;  but  the 
bonds  in  which  the  children  were  held  were  usu- 
ally light,  though  they  might  at  any  time  be 
tightened  into  cruel  restraint.  The  number  of 
women  was  much  smaller  than  of  men,  a  fact  lead- 
ing to  frequent  mating,  more  or  less  irregular, 
with  Indians,  until  it  often  happened  that  the 
little  half-breeds  about  a  post  far  outnumbered 
the  urchins  of  pure  blood.  The  isolated  French, 
indeed,  showed  always  a  tendency  to  fall  away 
into  the  savagery  which  surrounded  them ;  even 
when  there  was  in  the  veins  no  trace  of  wild 
blood,  the  coureur  de  bois  or  voyageur,  more 


48     THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS     [1717 

often  than  not  was  ready  to  sink  without  reluc- 
tance to  the  forest  level. 

Louisiana  in  those  days  had  the  vaguest  possi- 
ble boundaries,  being  held  broadly  to  comprise 
not  only  the  territory  west  of  the  river,  but 
also  the  region  east,  which  at  the  same  time  was 
south  of  Canada  and  west  of  the  English  colonies, 
neighbors  whom  the  proud  French  purposed  not 
long  to  tolerate.  A  chain  of  posts  was  in  contem- 
plation, and  soon  partially  established,  designed 
to  block  the  westward  advance  of  the  English. 
Behind  such  a  chain,  too,  as  population  increased, 
a  power  might  gather  which  before  long  would 
be  able  to  drive  the  English  into  the  sea.  But 
things  went  slowly.  In  1713  the  prominent  man 
at  Detroit,  Cadillac,  going  thence  by  Montreal 
and  France  to  New  Orleans,  found  there  a  dis- 
couraged handful,  perhaps  four  hundred  whites 
and  a  few  score  negroes,  and  this  was  by  far  the 
most  numerous  body  of  French  in  the  Mississippi 
basin.  Prospects  soon  after  brightened,  the  incu- 
bus of  a  monopoly  in  the  interest  of  one  Crozat 
being  removed.  Just  here  what  proved  a  great 
calamity  in  Europe  turned  out  to  be  a  wind  blow- 
ing good  to  the  colony.  In  1717  John  Law 
set  the  world  in  a  whirl  with  his  Mississippi 
scheme,  —  a  curious  delusion  turning  the  heads 
of  high  and  low  and  creating  a  fever  of  specula- 
tion. The  Mississippi  Company  sent  out  in  five 
years  seven  thousand  settlers  and  seven  hundred 


1750]         GROWTH  OF  NEW  ORLEANS  49 

slaves.  While  in  Europe  ruin  fell  broadcast  as 
the  bubble  exploded,  in  America  the  outcome  was 
at  last  good.  Though  disappointment  was  at  first 
universal,  and  though  the  outcry  was  loud  against 
the  cheats  who  had  misled  them  into  hardship, 
the  immigrants  learned  at  last  to  face  the  situa- 
tion ;  the  colony  finally  got  upon  its  feet. 

Naturally  in  the  immigration  men  had  largely 
predominated.  As  things  took  shape,  and  it  be- 
came plain  that  the  new  world  must  hereafter 
be  their  home,  the  question  grew  pressing  where 
should  wives  come  from  for  the  pioneers  ?  The 
problem  was  solved  as  it  had  been  before  in  Can- 
ada. Ship-loads  of  "  king's  maids,"  "filles  a  la 
cassette"  girls  with  little  trunks,  marriageable 
young  women,  were  sent  over  by  the  paternal 
government.  An  earlier  experiment  of  this  kind 
had  turned  out  disastrously ;  such  a  ship-load  had 
stopped  at  San  Domingo,  where  the  girls  con- 
tracted yellow  fever,  and  brought  it  with  them, 
giving  rise  to  a  sad  epidemic,  one  victim  of  which 
was  the  hero  Tonti,  the  lieutenant  of  La  Salle. 
Better  luck,  however,  attended  the  later  ventures. 
The  girls  were  mated  at  once  on  landing,  after  a 
fashion  rough  and  ready,  but  quite  adequate.  A 
happy  and  proper  union  was  the  usual  result ;  and 
to  this  day  some  of  the  best  families  of  Louisi- 
ana are  said  to  have  their  origin  in  matches  made 
in  a  few  minutes  on  the  levee  at  New  Orleans,  as 
the  enterprising  girls  landed  after  their  voyage. 


50     THE  COMING  OF  THE  EUROPEANS     [1750 

By  the  middle  of  the  century,  it  is  estimated, 
there  were  in  the  lower  Mississippi  Valley  about 
six  thousand  French,  though  to  make  up  this 
number  their  slaves  must  be  counted.  In  the 
upper  country  were  perhaps  twenty-five  hundred 
more.  How  many  rovers  of  the  wilderness  there 
may  have  been  besides,  it  is  impossible  to  say. 
To  give  stability  to  the  hold  on  the  upper  region, 
Fort  Chartres,  a  substantial  stronghold  of  masonry, 
had  been  built  some  distance  above  the  mouth  of 
the  Ohio. 

North  and  South  were  not  altogether  in  har- 
mony, the  fur-traders  from  Quebec  and  from  New 
Orleans  contending  sometimes  sharply.  In  the 
little  clusters  of  settlement  the  population  was 
light-hearted,  polite,  capable  of  terrible  deeds, 
but  generally  on  good  terms  among  themselves, 
and  not  inconsiderate  of  others.  The  habitans  and 
voyageurs  pursued  their  way  with  little  thought 
of  the  future.  The  great  people  in  France,  and 
their  servants  the  governor  and  soldiers  at  Quebec, 
schemed  for  the  peopling  of  the  vast  territory,  and 
for  using  it  as  a  vantage  ground  for  further  con- 
quests. But  new  men  were  beginning  to  push  in ; 
the  story  of  the  intrusion  is  a  momentous  one  and 
must  now  engage  us. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  ANGLO-SAXON   ADVANCE 

THE  Spaniards  had  approached  the  Mississippi 
Valley  from  the  south  and  west ;  the  French  had 
approached  from  the  north ;  the  east,  where  the  on- 
coming European  wave  might  have  been  expected 
to  strike  first,  was,  in  fact,  the  last  quarter  to  be 
assailed.  In  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury the  great  basin  had  been  scarcely  disturbed. 
No  trace  remained  of  Spanish  occupation ;  the  few 
thousand  French  scattered  from  the  mouth  of  the 
river  to  the  Lakes  had  made  small  impression. 
The  forests  were  unfelled,  the  prairies  un ploughed. 
The  wild  beasts  probably  had  hardly  begun  to 
diminish,  though  the  activity  of  the  hunters  to  be 
sure  had  been  stimulated.  As  to  the  Indians,  the 
hdbitans  seemed  far  more  likely  to  melt  away 
into  the  tribes,  than  to  displace  them  in  the  vast 
area  by  a  French  occupancy.  But  the  transform- 
ers were  now  at  hand. 

While  the  first  distinct  path-breaker  into  the 
region  beyond  the  Alleghanies  was  Walker,  who 
in  1748  penetrated  to  a  mountain  gap  and  a  west- 
ward flowing  stream  which  he  named  Cumberland, 


52  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE       [1753 

after  the  hero  of  Culloden,  then  much  in  the 
minds  of  men,  that  was  but  an  obscure  reaching 
out.  The  real  harbinger  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  day 
beyond  the  mountains  was  no  other  than  the  youth- 
ful Washington,  who,  twenty-one  years  old,  in 
1753  made  his  memorable  winter  journey  into 
the  wilderness  as  the  messenger  of  Dinwiddie, 
governor  of  Virginia.  With  Gist  as  a  companion 
his  party  reached  Venango,  on  French  Creek ; 
then  pushed  on  to  Le  Boeuf ,  fifteen  miles  south  of 
Lake  Erie,  just  back  of  Presqu'  Isle.  There  he 
interrogated  the  commander  as  to  French  inten- 
tions, and  set  forth  strenuously  the  claim  of  Vir- 
ginia to  the  valley  of  the  Ohio.  Washington  had 
been  introduced  to  the  wilderness  in  the  Shenan- 
doah  Valley  by  Lord  Fairfax,  the  eccentric  noble- 
man who  lived  there  secluded,  like  the  Banished 
Duke  in  the  Forest  of  Arden ;  the  young  sur- 
veyor was  well-fitted  to  be  the  forerunner  of  the 
immigration  which  the  colonies,  restless  now  down 
to  tide-water,  were  on  the  point  of  pouring  forth. 
As  the  French  awoke  to  their  danger  from  the 
east  and  took  measures  against  it,  establishing 
Fort  Duquesne  at  the  very  point  which  Washing- 
ton on  his  journey  had  noted  as  the  place  of  all 
others  to  be  held,  he  passed  easily  from  civil  func- 
tions to  military,  appearing  in  due  time  at  the  side 
of  Braddock,  where  his  masterful  quality  first 
became  conspicuous. 

The  first  battle  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  advance 


1765]         THE  FRENCH  DISPOSSESSED  53 

into  the  Mississippi  Valley  was  most  disastrous. 
As  so  often  before  and  since,  from  the  days  when 
our  forefathers  confronted  the  Danes  to  the  days 
when  our  English  brothers  are  confronting  the 
Boers,  at  the  beginning  was  frightful  defeat,  lead- 
ing to  loss  of  prestige  and  loudest  lamentation ; 
to  be  followed  by  success,  as  slow  tenacity  at  last 
grasps  the  problem  by  its  proper  handle.  The 
French  and  Indians  in  ambush  are  believed  to 
have  been  scarcely  half  the  number  of  the  bat- 
talions which  they  so  boldly  attacked.  Their  own 
loss  was  trifling,  although  it  included  at  the  very 
first  their  skillful  leader  Beaujeu.  Of  Braddock's 
army  three  fourths  of  the  officers  and  two  thirds 
of  the  men  were  presently  disposed  of,  an  aver- 
age perhaps  of  two  apiece  to  the  party  of  assail- 
ants. But,  as  a  hundred  times  before  and  since, 
the  bad  beginning  was  amply  atoned  for ;  the 
way  was  learned  at  last.  Fort  Duquesne  was  cap- 
tured, the  French  on  the  Ohio  dispossessed  with- 
out long  delay ;  and  in  1759,  when  Quebec  was 
captured,  all  was  over  for  France.  In  November, 
1762,  all  Louisiana  west  of  the  Mississippi,  to- 
gether with  New  Orleans  on  the  east  bank,  was 
ceded  to  Spain,  to  conciliate  the  Spanish  court. 
October  10,  1765,  came  for  France  the  last  hu- 
miliation. One  hundred  Highlanders  of  the  Black 
Watch  stood  drawn  up  at  Fort  Chartres,  and  to 
these  St.  Ange  turned  over  the  post ;  France  in 
this  act  relinquishing  its  hold  entirely  upon  what 
had  been  won  through  such  effort  and  heroism. 


54  THE   ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE        [1765 

And  now  once  more  as  to  dispossession  of  the 
Indians.  Was  it  right  that  they  should  be  dis- 
possessed ?  The  usual  tone  as  regards  this 
matter  is  that  of  self-reproach ;  that  in  this  dis- 
possession our  race  has  committed  a  sad  injustice. 
The  wrongs  of  the  Indian  have  been  bemoaned  by 
historians,  poets,  and  novelists,  until  the  "  cen- 
tury of  dishonor  "  has  come  to  be  regarded  as  a 
count  against  us  which  could  not  be  denied  or 
atoned  for.  Against  this  view  the  strenuous  and 
unshrinking  historian  of  the  winning  of  the  West, 
Theodore  Roosevelt,  makes  protest.  The  war 
against  the  savage,  he  claims,  was  inevitable. 
The  Indians  had  no  valid  ownership  of  the  land. 
Every  good  hunting-ground  was  claimed  by  many 
tribes.  Vast  regions  were  entirely  unoccupied 
both  east  and  west ;  where  there  was  occupancy, 
the  right  more  frequently  than  not  rested  upon 
some  previous  butchery  through  which  former 
occupants  had  been  exterminated.  Each  great 
confederacy  had  about  it  wide  wastes,  which  it  had 
depopulated.  To  the  east  of  the  Iroquois,  western 
Massachusetts  and  Vermont  were  an  utter  soli- 
tude ;  so,  also,  what  had  been  the  country  of  the 
Eries  and  the  Hurons  to  the  west  and  northwest. 
Kentucky  and  much  of  Tennessee  were  unten- 
anted,  except  as  now  and  then  crossed  by  war  and 
hunting  parties.  The  reader  has  just  seen  with 
what  a  besom  of  wrath  the  prairies  of  Illinois  had 
been  swept  clean  of  men.  Passing  beyond  the 
river,  the  Sioux  were  no  more  merciful.  Lewis 


1765]  OUR  INDIAN  POLICY  65 

and  Clark  could  march  for  months  without  meet- 
ing a  living  soul.  If  the  whites  have  often 
destroyed,  they  have  also  sometimes  shielded.  It 
seems  likely  that  but  for  them  the  entire  Algon- 
quin race  would  have  disappeared;  in  the  far  west, 
also,  weaker  peoples  have  been  protected  against 
their  fiercer  foes.  The  Commissioner  of  Indian 
Affairs  reports  at  the  present  moment  that  the 
numbers  of  the  tribes  have  probably  diminished 
but  little  since  the  time  of  Columbus.  They  have 
undoubtedly  suffered  less  at  white  hands  than 
they  suffered  before  through  warfare  and  torture 
among  themselves.  Tribes  have  been  shifted, 
sometimes  harshly  and  unjustly.  But  when  left 
to  themselves  they  were  ever  shifting ;  and  the  gov- 
ernment has  by  no  means  always  been  unmindful 
of  its  wards ;  often  they  have  been  helped  forward 
to  better  things.  There  is  reason  to  think  that 
our  Indian  policy,  while  sometimes  gravely  wrong, 
as  in  the  movement  of  the  Creeks  and  Cherokees 
from  Georgia,  and  the  treatment  of  Chief  Joseph 
and  the  Nez  Perces  at  a  later  time,  has  erred 
generally  on  the  side  of  weakness  and  sentiment- 
ality rather  than  inhumanity ;  and  that  the  In- 
dian agent  is  a  character  greatly  traduced,  being 
more  prone  to  treat  the  white  settler  unjustly 
than  the  savage.  The  pioneer  always  receives 
blame  from  those  who,  behind  him  and  sheltered 
by  him,  are  in  such  leisure  and  security  that 
they  can  cherish  sentimentalism. 


56         THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE  [1765 

Such  is  the  tone  of  Theodore  Roosevelt.  Shall 
we  say  it  is  just  ?  At  any  rate  the  dispossession 
of  the  Indians  was  a  thing  inevitable,  if  the  higher 
race  was  to  have  a  footing.  The  Aryan  advance 
did  in  America  only  what  had  been  done  before 
in  Europe  in  sweeping  off  the  primeval  man 
whom  it  found  in  its  path.  The  frontiersman  is 
always  rude  of  necessity,  and  his  work,  too,  is 
rude  of  necessity ;  high  forbearance  and  humanity 
are  likely  to  receive  scant  honor  while  he  performs 
his  task.  His  foe  had  the  wild  beast's  energy,  — 
the  wild  beast's  craft  as  well,  and  utter  pitiless- 
ness.  The  invariable  incidents  of  the  warfare 
were  the  burning  of  solitary  homes,  the  scalping  of 
mothers  and  children,  the  torture  of  captives.  The 
present  writer  rejoices  that  in  a  "  short  history  " 
details  of  such  horrors  may  be  spared.  It  must 
be  remembered  that  the  winning  of  the  West  from 
the  savage  was  a  most  desperate  enterprise,  in 
which  the  whites,  though  of  a  stock  most  intrepid 
and  tenacious,  were  often  on  the  brink  of  failure. 
Never  was  final  victory  more  hardly  wrung  out 
from  deadly  coirfbat.  Under  such  conditions  the 
strivers  cannot  be  nice  as  to  methods.  The  clear- 
ing of  the  Mississippi  Valley  of  its  primeval  in- 
habitants is  a  terrible  story,  as  regards  both  the 
savage  and  the  pioneer.  In  spite  of  our  rawness 
and  roughness,  the  outcome  has  been  smiling  farms, 
busy  cities,  a  regulated  land  full  of  homes  with 
a  hopeful  outlook  toward  sweetness  and  light,  — 


1763]  PONTIAC  57 

something  better  than  the  gloom  of  the  wilder- 
ness, wandered  over  by  men  in  whose  hearts  God's 
discipline  had  as  yet  evolved  no  trace  of  gentle- 
ness. 

When,  in  1759,  through  the  fall  of  Quebec,  the 
French  ceased  to  be  formidable  and  the  westward 
advance  of  the  English  was  opposed  only  by  the 
Indians,  the  figure  that  stood  in  the  foreground  to 
block  the  path  was  very  noteworthy.  Perhaps 
no  other  member  of  his  race  has  exhibited  such 
marks  of  greatness  as  Pontiac,  chief  of  the  Otta- 
was,  who,  although  his  friends  the  French  were 
irretrievably  ruined,  fought  against  the  victors 
with  a  skill  and  vigor  in  which  Indian  heroism  cul- 
minates. The  story  of  Pontiac  belongs  rather  to 
the  region  of  the  Lakes  than  to  the  Valley  of  the 
Mississippi,  though  his  far-reaching  conspiracy 
embraced  tribes  roving  to  the  south  and  west, 
and  there  was  everywhere  unrest.  Just  at  the 
farthest  eastern  limit  of  the  basin,  Henry  Bou- 
quet, on  July  3  and  4,  1763,  beat  off  the  Indians 
in  the  hard-fought  battle  of  Bushy  Run,  —  a  vic- 
tory which  prepared  the  way  for  important  things. 
By  the  side  of  the  great  river,  too,  Pontiac  found 
his  grave.  Killed  at  Cahokia  in  a  savage  brawl, 
in  1769,  St.  Ange,  commandant  at  St.  Louis, 
clothing  the  dead  chief  in  his  French  uniform,  the 
gift  of  Montcalm,  gave  him  burial  near  to  the  fort. 
The  grave  has  been  obliterated  by  the  great  city 
reared  on  the  spot  by  the  children  of  his  foes. 


58  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE       [1763 

Indeed  it  was  a  grave  which  should  have  been 
marked. 

For  several  years  just  after  1725,  averaging 
about  twelve  thousand  a  year,  the  Scotch-Irish  im- 
migration had  been  pouring  in.  The  stock  had 
originated  in  both  the  Highlands  and  the  Low- 
lands ;  they  had  crossed  into  Ireland  in  the  early 
times  of  the  Stuarts,  maintaining  the  sturdy  Pro- 
testantism in  which  they  had  been  nurtured.  In 
the  years  of  the  expulsion  of  James  II.  and  the 
accession  of  William  of  Orange,  they  gave  clear 
evidence  of  the  toughness  of  their  fibre,  the  siege 
of  Londonderry  in  especial  furnishing  illustra- 
tion. Very  prolific,  they  became  crowded ;  they 
felt  hampered,  too,  by  old  world  traditions.  These 
causes  brought  about  a  second  overflow,  this  time 
into  America,  where  they  were  to  play  a  most  im- 
portant part.  Some  of  these  people  came  to  New 
England,  contributing  power  to  a  stock  already 
strong ;  for  the  most  part,  however,  they  landed 
further  south,  at  ports  in  a  line  stretching  from 
Pennsylvania  to  the  Carolinas.  They  did  not 
remain  on  the  seaboard,  but  struck  out  for  the 
backwoods,  pausing  first  near  the  mountains  which 
until  now  had  hemmed  in  the  colonies.  Stern 
and  virile  race  that  they  were,  they  took  in  on  the 
frontier  a  number  of  good  elements,  —  Huguenot, 
English,  German,  — as  here  and  there  an  enterpris- 
ing group  from  these  stocks  pushed  out  toward 
the  forest.  One  generation  was  sufficient  to  as- 


1763]  THE  SCOTCH-IRISH  59 

similate  all  into  a  mass  homogeneous  enough  to  be 
thoroughly  effective.  They  hated  popery  and  pre- 
lacy to  the  point  of  fanaticism.  The  rigid  Pres- 
byterianism  of  their  covenanting  forefathers  fell 
to  some  extent  out  of  mind  in  their  remoteness, 
but  the  prejudices  it  had  nurtured  remained. 
Above  all,  they  cherished  the  passion  for  freedom. 
At  a  synod  in  Philadelphia  the  grandfather  of 
John  Caldwell  Calhoun,  John  Caldwell  by  name, 
had  led  the  Scotch-Irish  in  offering  to  the  gover- 
nor of  Virginia  protection  for  the  province  from 
dangers  towards  the  west,  provided  freedom  of 
conscience  were  guaranteed  to  them.  The  offer 
was  accepted,  and  the  Scotch-Irish,  feeling  that  a 
suitable  equivalent  had  been  received,  at  once 
interposed  such  a  wall  that  the  people  of  the 
tide-water  regions  could  ever  after  sleep  in  peace. 
The  part  which  the  Scotch-Irish  henceforth  played 
is  a  memorable  one.  Through  the  long  valley 
between  the  Blue  Kidge  and  the  Alleghanies  they 
spread  downward,  through  southwest  Pennsylva- 
nia, Virginia,  and  North  Carolina,  in  a  swarm 
little  marked  at  the  time  on  the  seaboard,  but 
whose  activity  was  about  to  change  the  face  of 
the  continent.  The  Alleghanies,  not  easy  to  pen- 
etrate, made  the  southwestward  path  the  line  of 
least  resistance  for  them.  In  rugged  western 
North  Carolina  they  met  an  immigration  of  similar 
people  pushing  westward  from  their  landing-place 
at  Charleston.  As  in  an  axe  the  softer  metal  has 


60  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE        [1763 

welded  upon  the  front  of  it  a  wedge  of  the  hardest 
steel,  capable  of  taking  on  a  fine  cutting  edge, 
hard  to  dull  or  to  fracture  no  matter  what  it  may 
strike,  so  the  Anglo-Saxon  advance  against  the 
savagery  of  the  great  basin  was  faced  with  a 
mass  which  nothing  could  bend  or  dint. 

As  this  forlorn  hope  of  civilization  pauses  for  a 
moment  in  the  back  country  before  it  goes  out 
into  the  wilderness  beyond  the  mountains,  it  is 
well  worth  a  little  study.  The  figures  were  for 
the  most  part  tall  and  gaunt,  with  reddish  close 
curling  hair  and  frames  in  which  the  bone  and 
sinew  appeared  plainly  under  the  scant  flesh.  In 
dress  they  took  points  from  the  Indians,  favoring 
especially,  besides  moccasins  and  leggings,  the 
fringed  deer-skin  hunting  shirt,  which  Koosevelt 
declares  to  be  "  the  most  distinctive  and  pictur- 
esque national  dress  ever  worn  in  America."  For 
headgear,  a  broad-brimmed  felt  hat,  or  more  often 
a  coon-skin  cap,  with  the  tail  depending,  sufficed. 
The  aids  nearest  at  hand  were  always  the  axe  and 
the  rifle,  in  the  use  of  which  tools  the  world  has 
never  seen  better  adepts.  The  rifle  and  the  axe, 
looking  at  the  part  they  have  played  in  the  history 
of  America,  are  indeed  implements  of  note.  The 
barrel  of  the  rifle  was  long,  with  a  small  bore, 
admitting  balls  weighing  thirty  or  forty  to  the 
pound,  though  sometimes  lighter  ;  and  was  forged 
out  of  thick  soft  iron.  Into  the  short  stock,  with 
butt  scooped  out  for  the  shoulder,  the  flint-lock  was 


1769]  FRONTIER  LIFE  61 

fitted.  It  was  clumsy  and  ill-balanced  as  a  weapon, 
but  in  skillful  hands  most  accurate.  It  was  made 
commonly  in  the  woods,  the  frontier  forges  being 
quite  capable  of  good  work  here.  A  tall  hunter, 
folding  his  hands  across  the  muzzle,  could  conve- 
niently rest  his  chin  there  as  he  stood. 

In  the  little  settlements  there  was  thorough 
equality.  The  nimble  axes  speedily  made  a  clear- 
ing, within  which  rose  at  once  a  cluster  of  cabins 
with  a  stockade  fort,  into  which  all  might  flee  in 
case  of  an  alarm.  The  settlement  could  be  estab- 
lished in  a  few  days  ;  it  could  be  abandoned,  too, 
almost  as  easily  as  the  Arabs  fold  their  tents ;  for 
the  frontiersman  was  always  ready  to  strike  out 
farther ;  rifle,  axe,  and  such  other  simple  utensils 
as  their  life  required  being  borne  at  the  girdle  or 
on  the  back.  In  the  simple  commerce,  barter  was 
the  usual  method.  The  men  were  tanners  as  well 
as  hunters,  providing  especially  good  store  of 
tough  and  supple  deer-skins,  which  the  women 
made  into  clothing.  They  ate  from  wooden  bowls 
and  trenchers ;  the  food,  aside  from  game,  being 
largely  maize  ground  in  handmills,  or  roughly 
beaten  into  hominy  on  a  block.  While  salt  was 
scarce,  sugar  could  easily  be  made  from  maple- 
trees.  When  the  yield  of  the  hunt  was  abundant 
the  meat  was  "  jerked,''  —  dried  in  the  sun  and 
smoked,  —  and  so  roughly  preserved.  The  hunter 
could  imitate  the  calls  of  the  beasts  and  birds  with 
which  he  lived  in  close  intimacy.  At  certain  sea- 


62          THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE         [1769 

sons  the  heavens  were  fairly  darkened  by  flocks 
of  migrating  wild  fowl.  Black  and  gray  squirrels 
were  so  numerous  as  to  be  great  pests  ;  so,  too, 
mosquitoes  and  gnats ;  while  snakes,  panthers, 
wolves,  and  bears  exposed  them  to  more  formida- 
ble dangers.  The  Indians  were  a  still  greater 
terror. 

In  the  midst  of  all,  however,  life  went  bravely 
on  on  the  little  mountain  rills  that  flowed  Missis- 
sippi-ward. They  married  and  gave  in  marriage ; 
and  when  children  came,  many  a  baby  rocked  in 
a  sap-trough  for  the  time  being  out  of  use,  grew 
up  to  be  a  famous  man.  The  sports  of  the  men 
were  rough,  often  to  brutality.  The  transition 
from  play  to  gouging  or  fighting  to  the  death  was 
quite  too  easy,  the  frontiersman  here  showing  a 
side  most  repulsive.  As  religion  decayed  among 
them  in  their  remoteness  from  civilization,  they 
became  profane  and  low,  though  never  sinking 
into  degeneracy  beyond  recovery.  At  the  worst, 
there  always  remained  a  manful  core  of  character 
on  which,  if  circumstances  grew  favoring,  a  good 
structure  could  be  built.  It  was  a  rough  multi- 
tude, and  it  had  the  roughest  work  to  do.  A  boy 
at  twelve  was  given  a  rifle  and  a  loophole  in  the 
stockade  to  defend ;  henceforth  through  life  the 
weapon  was  scarcely  less  a  part  of  him  than  his 
own  hands  or  feet.  But  for  such  backwoodsmen 
the  West  could  not  have  been  won.  Peaceful 
farmers  and  regular  soldiers  could  never  have 


1769]  DANIEL  BOON  63 

coped  with  the  difficulties.  In  the  absence  of 
law,  Judge  Lynch  was  in  his  element.  The  whip- 
ping-post and  hangman's  noose  brought  swift 
judgment  to  thief  and  murderer,  and  in  the  hasty 
scrutiny  the  innocent  too  often  became  the  victims. 
The  mass,  however,  was  full  of  grit  and  substance 
as  it  took  in  hand  a  task  as  trying  as  pioneer  ever 
tackled.  At  a  later  time  when  the  task  was 
accomplished,  the  rudeness  flowered  often  into  a 
fair  civilization. 

Thus,  soon  after  the  middle  of  the  century,  the 
subduers  stood  upon  the  threshold  of  the  land 
they  were  to  conquer.  The  hour  for  the  ad- 
vance had  arrived,  and  with  the  hour  came  the 
man  for  the  leadership.  Daniel  Boon  was  born 
in  Pennsylvania,  in  1734,  of  English  stock,  and 
went  as  a  boy  down  the  long  valley  between  the 
Alleghanies  and  the  Blue  Ridge  to  western  North 
Carolina  with  the  stream  of  immigration  which 
was  prevailingly  Scotch-Irish.  There  in  due  time 
he  married  and  tried  to  settle.  He  is  said  to 
have  been  tall,  gaunt,  sinewy,  with  keen  eyes. 
His  physical  force  was  extraordinary,  carrying 
him  to  the  age  of  eighty-six,  through  such  hardships 
as  few  men  have  ever  faced.  His  portrait  pre- 
sents a  quiet,  thoughtful,  genial  countenance  with 
little  hint  of  the  hankering  after  solitude  which 
characterized  him,  for  he  was  never  easy  except 
when  far  in  the  advance.  The  sound  of  a  white 
man's  footfall  near  at  hand  was  to  him  always  an 


64  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE        [1769 

alarm  to  decamp,  and  plunge  into  deeper  shades. 
On  Boon's  Creek,  a  little  tributary  of  the  Wa- 
tauga,  which  in  turn  is  a  tributary  through  the 
Holston  of  the  Tennessee,  has  stood  until  recently 
—  perhaps  it  still  stands  —  an  old  beech-tree,  into 
the  bark  of  which  was  cut  this  inscription  :  "  D. 
Boon  cilled  a  bar  on  tree  in  the  year  1760."  Per- 
haps the  young  hunter,  about  to  become  a  famous 
man,  cut  here  the  record  of  an  exploit.  It  was  not, 
however,  until  he  was  a  mature  man  of  thirty-five 
that  he  fairly  set  out  on  his  work.  May  1,  1769, 
calling  himself  with  a.  certain  religious  consecra- 
tion an  instrument  ordained  of  God  to  people  this 
wilderness,  he  struck  out  into  the  best-known  and 
easiest  opening.  With  five  companions  he  passed 
through  Cumberland  Gap  northwestward,  follow- 
ing the  Warrior's  or  Wilderness  trail,  reaching 
spots  ascertained  and  named  by  Walker  twenty- 
one  years  before.  Early  in  June  he  reached  the 
blue-grass  region  of  Kentucky,  where  in  a  solitude 
unbroken  by  any  suggestion  of  man,  civilized  or 
wild,  he  was  thoroughly  happy.  Yet  in  a  certain 
way  he  was  in  the  midst  of  life.  There  were  wood- 
paths  through  which  the  wild  game  went  con- 
stantly to  and  fro  ;  such  paths  were  especially 
marked  about  the  salt-licks,  where  they  had  existed 
for  ages ;  for  the  mammoth  and  many  another  su- 
perseded beast  had  sought  the  same  licks  through 
many  a  century  before.  Here  he  reveled  through- 
out the  summer ;  but  in  December,  having  been 


DANIEL   BOON 


1770]          WASHINGTON  AS  SURVEYOR  65 

attacked  by  roving  Indians,  he  experienced  his 
first  Indian  captivity,  which  this  time  he  speedily 
escaped  from.  Next  year  his  companions  left 
Boon  to  himself  for  three  months,  lone  as  a  Cru- 
soe in  his  isolation.  They  returned,  however,  with 
others ;  and  we  find  Boon  the  centre  of  a  group 
of  pioneers,  some  of  them  scarcely  less  marked  and 
picturesque  than  Boon  himself.  Neely,  Mansker, 
Simon  Kenton,  McAfee,  and  the  rest,  —  the  names 
reveal  their  stock,  —  German,  English,  especially 
Scotch-Irish,  —  men  of  sinews  of  iron  and  invin- 
cible spirits,  matching  the  Indians  in  forest  prow- 
ess, becoming  sometimes  as  cruel,  but  constituting 
the  effective  cutting  edge  with  which  the  wilder- 
ness was  to  be  cleft  and  cleared.  But  about 
Boon,  who  above  all  others  was  the  type  and  chief 
of  the  pioneers,  milder  associations  gather.  He 
was  a  surveyor,  as  well  as  hunter,  mapping  the 
land  for  peaceful  occupancy ;  and  if  he  became  a 
great  Indian  fighter,  it  was  only  because  the  inex- 
orable conditions  made  peaceful  living  with  the 
tribes  an  impossibility.  Not  far  off  Washington, 
too,  was  active  as  a  surveyor.  He  had  easily 
become  inured  to  wilderness  hardships  and  Indian 
fighting,  as  we  have  seen.  Now,  starting  from 
Fort  Pitt  while  Boon  was  laying  hands  on  the 
blue-grass  country,  this  other  measurer  of  the 
land  sailed  down  the  Ohio  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Kanawa.  But  his  career  as  a  winner  of  the  West 
was  soon  ended;  his  energies  were  soon  to  find 
a  field  elsewhere. 


66  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE       [1770 

The  scouts  and  surveyors  having  preceded,  the 
regular  settlers  were  not  slow  to  follow.  They 
had  little  reason  to  be  troubled  in  conscience  as 
to  their  right  to  go  forward.  There  were  the 
colonial  charters,  according  to  which  the  several 
provinces  possessed  each  its  strip  of  territory 
stretching  indefinitely  westward  ;  and  if  there  was 
any  question  as  to  the  king  of  England's  right 
to  make  such  a  grant,  the  great  Six  Nations  in 
1768,  at  the  treaty  of  Fort  Stanwix,  had  solemnly 
ceded  to  the  English  the  vast  tract  lying  between 
the  Ohio  and  the  Tennessee,  which  they  claimed 
to  own,  receiving  in  return  compensation  that  they 
valued.  The  title  of  the  Six  Nations  to  the  tract, 
to  be  sure,  was  shadowy  to  the  last  degree  ;  but  no 
Indian  Nation  had  any  better  title.  The  intend- 
ing settlers  might  have  reared  their  cabins  with 
the  freest  conscience,  had  they  been  ever  so  scru- 
pulous about  their  right ;  but  few  indeed  were 
there  among  them  who  were  scrupulous.  Before 
them  lay  the  land  of  promise ;  they  would  gain 
and  hold  it  if  they  could,  as  if  it  were  no  man's 
land.  Through  the  labyrinth  of  vales  and  glens 
into  which  the  immigrants  had  penetrated,  run 
the  streams,  the  Clinch,  the  French  Broad,  the 
Holston,  with  little  tributaries  like  the  Noli- 
chucky  and  the  Watauga,  streams  which  uniting 
at  last  form  the  Tennessee.  The  noble  river, 
turning  back  upon  itself  at  the  Moccasin  Bend 
below  Lookout  Mountain,  as  if  loth  to  leave  the 


1770]  JAMES   ROBERTSON  67 

highlands,  flows  on  slowly  at  last  through  the 
lower  levels  on  its  long  way  to  the  Ohio.  The 
region  was  claimed  by  North  Carolina,  a  colony 
always  turbulent  and  ill  ordered.  The  mountain 
men  preferred  a  connection  with  Virginia,  through 
whose  outskirts  they  had  passed  on  their  long 
southwestward  march.  It  was  indeed  much  easier 
to  get  to  Virginia  or  Pennsylvania,  if  a  little 
longer,  than  to  cross  the  rugged  heights  which 
shut  off  from  them  the  more  southern  colony. 

As  the  settlers  advanced,  it  was  the  warpath  of 
the  Cherokees  which  they  followed  at  first,  a 
branch  of  which  was  the  Warrior's  Trail  that  had 
taken  Boon  through  Cumberland  Gap.  The 
Cherokees  having  made  a  small  concession  in 
1769  on  the  Watauga,  a  restless  group  presently 
went  toward  it.  The  hunters  had  carried  their 
own  burdens ;  now  came  the  era  of  the  pack- 
horse,  axes  working  to  the  right  and  left  of  the 
trail,  that  the  burdened  beasts  might  make  their 
way  unobstructed.  Some  of  the  group  were  of 
poor  quality,  "  redemptioners  "  and  outcasts  from 
the  coast  towns ;  but  for  the  most  part  they  were 
of  the  best  possible  quality  for  the  work  to  be 
done.  Two  men  among  them  stand  out  as  the 
most  typical  and  conspicuous,  —  the  first  to  ap- 
pear James  Robertson.  He  came  to  the  Watauga 
in  1770,  a  young  man  lately  married  who  learned 
to  read  and  write  from  his  better  educated  wife. 
A  tall  florid,  blue-eyed  Scotch-Irishman,  he  was 


68  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE       [1771 

in  character  cautious  but  full  of  daring  ;  a  mighty 
hunter  and  Indian  fighter,  of  course,  for  to  be 
that  was  a  condition  of  existence ;  but  as  he  ma- 
tured hunting  and  fighting  became  secondary. 
He  was  to  lead  in  other  and  higher  work. 
Though  his  education  was  so  long  postponed  and 
so  simple,  his  mind  was  good,  and  he  soon  stood 
out  as  a  political  and  intellectual  guide.  In  1771 
he  established  a  little  nucleus  of  settlement  on  an 
island  in  the  Watauga,  biding  his  time.  John 
Sevier  came  into  the  country  in  1772  from  the 
Shenandoah  Valley.  He  was  of  Huguenot  blood, 
possessed  of  a  fair  education,  and  a  gentleman  by 
birth,  as  Robertson  was  not.  He  was  a  man  of 
fine  presence,  and  of  bearing  that  smoothed  his 
way  in  any  environment.  He  was  a  correspond- 
ent of  Franklin,  Madison,  and  other  famous  men, 
and  yet  associated  through  life  with  backwoodsmen 
of  the  rudest.  He  was  quite  capable  of  playing 
a  part  in  refined  surroundings,  but  through  his 
conditions,  it  was  another  side  of  him  that  devel- 
oped ;  he  became  a  terror  to  the  savage  beyond 
any  man  in  the  southwest,  and  on  one  memorable 
field  showed  his  prowess  against  a  civilized  foe. 

The  pioneers,  among  whom  Robertson  and  Se- 
vier were  the  conspicuous  men,  formed  in  1772 
the  Watauga  Association,  whose  written  consti- 
tution was  the  first  document  of  that  kind  drawn 
up  in  the  Mississippi  Valley.  All  was  done  in 
the  best  Anglo-Saxon  way.  In  properly  ordered 


1772]  WATAUGA  ASSOCIATION  69 

folk-rnotes  delegates  were  elected  to  a  legislative 
body  which  met  at  Kobertson's  cabins,  on  the 
island  in  the  Watauga.  The  legislature  in  turn 
chose  a  committee  or  court  of  five  men,  two  among 
whom  were  Robertson  and  Sevier,  the  functions 
of  which  body  were  both  judicial  and  executive. 
A  chairman,  clerk,  and  sheriff  were  the  instru- 
ments through  whom  the  court  acted.  For  the 
procedure  of  this  court,  and  its  functionaries,  rules 
simple  but  adequate  were  laid  down,  — a  code 
thoroughly  practical,  with  nothing  doctrinaire. 
It  was  level-headed  and  according  to  the  best  tra- 
ditions. It  continued  in  force  for  six  years,  when 
North  Carolina,  moving  more  energetically  to 
establish  her  claim  to  the  country  beyond  the 
mountains,  superseded  the  Watauga  Association 
with  "  Washington  County."  The  five  old  com- 
mitteemen  remained  in  office,  however,  and  there 
was  little  change  except  in  name  until  a  time  long 
after.  The  Watauga  Association,  the  first  Anglo- 
Saxon  political  organization  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley,  should  be  kept  in  mind. 

As  the  thoughts  of  men  began  to  turn  toward 
the  west,  the  vagueness  of  the  colonial  charters 
became  more  and  more  a  source  of  embarrassment. 
Virginia  in  particular,  which  in  the  few  years 
immediately  before  her  change  from  province  to 
state  had  as  governor  Lord  Dunmore,  an  energetic 
servant  of  the  crown  and  upholder  of  the  rights 
pf  his  colony,  was  in  strife  with  North  Carolina 


70  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE       [1772 

on  one  side  and  Pennsylvania  on  the  other.  To 
the  north  Virginia  claimed  Fort  Pitt,  now  merging 
into  Pittsburg  as  settlers  gathered,  and  the  valley 
of  the  Monongahela ;  to  the  south  she  was  not  at 
all  unresponsive  to  the  Watauga  people,  who  so 
much  preferred  a  connection  with  the  more  acces- 
sible and  less  turbulent  Virginia,  causing  umbrage 
to  North  Carolina  by  thus  turning  the  back. 
What  might  have  happened  in  the  end  had  not 
the  great  change  intervened  that  was  now  close  at 
hand  it  is  impossible  to  say.  Lord  Dunmore  was 
diverted  from  strife  with  his  white  neighbors  by 
a  fierce  outbreak  of  Indian  hostility  which  re- 
quired to  be  met  by  all  the  force  he  could  sum- 
mon. Of  the  Indians  in  the  Mississippi  basin, 
those  toward  the  south,  of  the  Muscogee  race,  were 
often  far  along  toward  the  earliest  stage  of  civili- 
zation. The  Cherokees,  in  particular,  with  whom 
the  Watauga  men  were  immediately  in  contact, 
were  herdsmen  and  even  farmers,  rearing  cabins 
scarcely  less  elaborate  than  the  frontiersmen's, 
showing  a  certain  refinement  in  their  sports  and 
dances,  and  practicing  arts  that  require  patience 
and  skill.  With  their  elevation  they  had  become 
less  wolfish,  and  so  less  formidable.  They  were 
still  sufficiently  ferocious,  but  it  was  certainly  the 
case  that  the  white  advance  by  the  Tennessee  had 
a  warfare  to  meet  somewhat  less  desperate  than 
the  immigration  farther  north.  Kentucky,  as  we 
know,  was  untenanted,  a  land  simply  roamed  over 


1774]  LORD  DUNMORE'S  WAR  71 

transitorily  by  war  and  hunting  parties.  But 
between  the  Ohio  and  the  Lakes  lay  many  tribes, 
a  population  numerous,  and  so  low  in  their  sav- 
agery that  their  fierceness  was  unmitigated.  These 
tribes  had  become  fully  alive  to  the  danger  threat- 
ening them  from  the  new  whites,  who,  displacing 
the  French,  were  now  thrusting  in  upon  them  from 
the  east;  and  Cornstalk,  an  able  chief  of  the 
Shawnees,  organizing  the  Indian  attack,  drove 
against  the  intruders  with  all  possible  craft  and 
fury.  In  what  is  known  as  Lord  Dunmore's 
War,  the  principal  incident  was  the  bloody  bat- 
tle at  the  mouth  of  the  Kanawha,  at  Pleasant 
Point,  where  the  backwoodsmen,  though  brave 
and  ably  led,  only  doubtfully  held  their  own.  It 
was  a  bitter  fight,  the  details  of  which  form  an 
especially  grewsome  page  in  frontier  annals.  We 
need  dwell  upon  it  no  farther  than  to  note  that 
here  appeared  first  conspicuously  young  George 
Rogers  Clark,  a  figure  of  the  first  rank  in  the 
winning  of  the  West. 

In  the  battle  of  the  great  Kanawha,  the  Indians, 
though  hardly  defeated,  were  somewhat  cowed 
by  the  prowess  of  the  frontiersmen,  which  was 
now  shown  for  the  first  time  on  a  considerable 
scale.  Their  forays  were  for  a  few  years  less  en- 
ergetic, and  the  work  of  settlement  was  pushed 
in  the  lull.  Robertson,  leaving  his  island  in  the 
Watauga,  pressed  on  to  the  Cumberland  in  cen- 
tral Tennessee,  where  some  of  his  comrades  became 


72  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE       [1775 

the  founders  of  Nashville  ;  Clark  visited  the  Illi- 
nois country ;  while  Boon  laid  strong  foundations 
for  a  commonwealth  in  Kentucky.  Henderson, 
a  land  speculator,  a  type  of  a  class  who  in  these 
days  were  beginning  to  figure,  for  the  most  part 
with  baleful  effect,  bought  of  the  Cherokees  the 
tract  between  the  Kentucky  and  Cumberland 
rivers,  paying  .£10,000  in  goods  which  the  Indians 
prized.  The  chief,  Dragging  Canoe,  led  an  op- 
position to  the  sale,  but  he  was  overruled ;  the 
price  was  coveted  and  the  Indians  no  doubt  well 
knew  that  their  ownership  of  what  they  were 
transferring  was  very  shadowy.  They  told  the 
buyers  that  it  was  a  dark  and  bloody  ground  and 
predicted  much  trouble  for  those  who  should  try 
to  hold  it.  Henderson,  however,  was  energetic, 
and  employed  Boon  as  his  agent,  who  went  at 
once  with  thirty  men  to  smooth  and  widen  the 
Warrior's  Trail,  from  the  Holston  toward  the 
northwest.  April  1,  Boonsboro  was  founded,  and 
almost  at  the  same  moment  three  other  little  clus- 
ters, Harrodsburg,  Boiling  Springs,  and  Logan's 
Station.  They  were  in  each  case  a  little  group  of 
cabins  under  the  shelter  of  a  block-house.  Kows 
of  palisades  sometimes  connected  house  with  house 
about  a  square  so  that  all  were  inclosed,  each 
door  opening  upon  a  central  space,  a  little  strong- 
hold which  it  was  quite  certain  would  need  to  be 
defended.  Of  the  settlers  who  began  to  come  in, 
many  became  discouraged,  and  the  trail  was  some- 


1775]  TRANSYLVANIA  73 

times  blocked,  as  advancing  and  retreating  par- 
ties encountered  each  other  with  no  space  for 
passing  to  the  right  or  left.  But  Boon  and  others 
were  stout-hearted;  the  name  Transylvania  was 
given  to  the  grant ;  and  representatives  gathered 
in  orderly  fashion  the  first  year,  1775,  from  the 
few  stations  —  seventeen  men  —  under  a  great 
elm  in  a  field  of  white  clover,  to  pass  laws. 
Transylvania  lasted  no  longer  than  the  Watauga 
Association,  for  in  a  few  years  Virginia  annulled 
the  organization.  But  in  the  Transylvania  days 
came  in  a  number  of  men  who  played  a  fine  part 
and  handed  down  their  names  in  important 
families.  Henderson,  to  be  sure,  had  only  mer- 
cenary motives.  His  settlers  he  abhorred,  call- 
ing backwoodsmen  in  general  "  a  set  of  scoundrels 
who  scarcely  believed  in  God  or  feared  the  devil." 
But  Todd,  Harrod,  Logan,  were  men  of  different 
temper,  cementing  the  foundations  of  the  new 
state  with  their  blood  and  tears,  then  taking  care 
for  a  proper  civil  and  social  order. 

Glancing  toward  the  Northwest,  the  solitude 
penetrated  for  a  moment  by  Hennepin  had  re- 
mained until  these  years  broken  only  by  the  four 
traders.  The  English  path-breaker  came  in  1766, 
in  the  person  of  Jonathan  Carver,  a  Connecticut 
Yankee,  who,  leaving  Boston  the  year  before, 
reached  Mackinac  in  time  to  start  in  September 
by  the  Green  Bay  route  for  the  Mississippi. 
Making  his  way  in  the  track  of  Marquette,  up  the 


74  THE  ANGLO-SAXON  ADVANCE        [1775 

Fox,  and  down  the  Wisconsin,  he  reached  in  due 
time  the  Mississippi.  This  he  ascended,  passing 
the  Falls  of  St.  Anthony,  to  the  mouth  of  the  St. 
Francis.  He  was  a  man  of  far-reaching  views, 
foreseeing  remarkably  what  was  afterward  to 
come.  After  exploring  the  Minnesota  Valley, 
and  taking  up  a  claim  on  the  site  of  St.  Paul, 
which  caused  disquiet  in  the  real  estate  market, 
more  than  a  hundred  years  later,  he  returned  to 
Boston  in  1767,  and  published  soon  after  his 
remarkable  travels,  the  book  containing  the  first 
known  picture  of  the  Falls  of  St.  Anthony 
and  the  first  detailed  account  of  what  is  now 
Minnesota. 

While  the  Northwest  waited,  before  the  close 
of  1775  three  hundred  settlers  had  fixed  their 
homes  in  Kentucky.  An  event  had  just  before 
occurred  which  showed  that  the  newcomers,  while 
pushing  onward,  had  their  eyes  out  for  what  was 
happening  beyond  the  mountains  behind  them. 
A  little  party,  reading  one  day  in  a  news  sheet 
which  some  late  recruit  had  brought  the  tidings 
of  the  19th  of  April  of  that  year,  baptized  their 
bivouac  "  Lexington."  And  here  a  new  chapter 
in  our  story  begins. 


CHAPTER  IV 

HOW  THE  UNITED   STATES   TOOK  HOLD 

THE  Declaration  of  Independence  came,  and 
the  great  war  was  definitely  entered  upon.  The 
energetic  British  government  attacked  from  the 
west  as  well  as  from  the  east.  Henry  Hamilton, 
the  capable  officer  in  command  at  Detroit,  called 
the  "  hair-buyer,"  on  account  of  his  complicity  in 
many  a  scalping  raid,  —  though  indeed  he  was 
humane  to  captives,  and  only  the  instrument  of 
his  superiors  in  employing  the  savage,  —  pushed 
matters  ruthlessly,  until  the  whole  frontier,  from 
the  headwaters  of  the  Ohio  far  down  the  valley, 
was  aflame.  The  effort  was  to  drive  back  the 
advancing  line  of  settlement,  and  every  frontier 
champion  with  his  following  fought  on  one  side  or 
the  other.  The  Tories  in  many  cases  betook 
themselves  to  Hamilton  at  Detroit,  becoming 
fiercer  foes  of  their  old  neighbors  than  the  British 
themselves.  Many  of  the  French  took  up  arms 
for  the  new  masters,  who  had  conquered  them  in 
1759.  Beyond  all,  the  Indians,  the  Delawares 
alone  showing  hesitation,  rushed  into  blood-shed- 
ding with  the  zest  of  tigers.  There  were  no  bat- 


76       THE  UNITED  STATES  TOOK  HOLD    [1777 

ties  of  moment,  but  parties,  often  of  not  more 
than  two  or  three  on  a  side,  grappled  in  the  death- 
struggle.  Cabins  everywhere  were  consumed ; 
through  every  wood-path  were  driven  groups  of 
disconsolate  captives,  guarded  front  and  rear  by 
painted  demons,  at  whose  belts  hung  the  reeking 
scalps  of  neighbors,  perhaps  of  parents  or  chil- 
dren, of  the  captives.  They  were  fortunate  souls 
who  escaped  torture  through  the  door  of  bloody 
death.  All  the  leaders  with  whom  we  have  been 
concerned  —  Robertson  and  Sevier  in  the  south, 
in  the  north  Boon,  Kenton,  George  Rogers  Clark 
—  thinned  with  their  own  unfailing  rifles  the 
number  of  their  wild  assailants,  and  directed  and 
heartened  the  little  groups  of  settlers  struggling 
so  desperately  to  keep  their  foothold.  All  mourned 
close  comrades  or  kindred  overtaken  on  the  trail 
or  in  the  clearing.  Probably  no  Indian  ever  quite 
attained  with  the  rifle  the  skill  of  the  best 
white  marksmen  ;  as,  on  the  other  hand,  no  white 
ever  quite  reached  Indian  skill  in  tracking  a  foe 
or  finding  cover  when  pursued.  The  onset  seemed 
at  first  likely  to  succeed.  In  the  spring  of  1777, 
Boon  himself,  while  making  salt  with  compan- 
ions at  the  Blue  Licks,  was  badly  worsted  and 
carried  captive  up  the  Little  Miami.  He  won  his 
captors  at  last  by  good  nature  and  tact,  taking 
care  to  keep  concealed  his  real  strength  and  skill. 
He  was  taken  to  Detroit,  where  Hamilton  tried 
to  buy  him  for  X100,  but  the  Indians  wished  to 


1762]  BOON  AND  KENTON  77 

adopt  him,  and  would  not  let  him  go.  Watching 
his  chance,  he  at  last  darted  for  the  woods,  run- 
ning in  four  days  one  hundred  and  sixty  miles, 
during  which  flight  he  broke  his  fast  but  once. 
His  speed  saved  his  settlement,  Boonsboro ;  he 
reached  it  just  at  the  moment  of  an  Indian  at- 
tack which  he  was  able  to  foil. 

No  less  remarkable  than  the  experiences  of 
Boon  were  those  of  his  friend  Simon  Kenton,  like 
his  comrade  a  calm,  pleasant-natured,  well-poised 
character,  with  a  reserve  of  force  and  courage 
which  in  desperate  circumstances  could  dare  and 
do  to  the  point  of  the  miraculous.  He  was  tall, 
in  the  highest  degree  vigorous,  and  without  bod- 
ily defect.  He  saved  Boon's  life  by  shooting  an 
Indian  foe  just  as  his  tomahawk  was  descending. 
He  captured,  while  off  on  a  raid  in  Indian  fash- 
ion with  but  two  companions,  two  hundred  and 
sixty  horses ;  but  while  trying  to  get  them  across 
the  Ohio,  he  was  himself  captured.  He  was  beaten 
with  ramrods  ;  four  posts  being  driven  into  the 
ground  firm  and  far  apart,  a  hand  or  a  foot  was 
tied  to  each,  and  thus  he  was  "  staked  out."  By 
day  he  was  forced  along  on  an  unbroken  horse,  his 
hands  bound  behind  his  back,  his  feet  tied  under 
the  horse's  belly.  Being  tortured  from  town  to 
town,  he  ran  the  gauntlet  eight  times,  four  times 
by  dexterous  dodging  and  strength  escaping  with 
but  few  blows.  His  face  was  painted  black,  a 
sign  that  he  was  to  be  burned ;  and  he  was  in  fact 


78       THE  UNITED  STATES  TOOK  HOLD     [1765 

tied  three  times  to  the  stake.  He  was,  however, 
ransomed  at  last  at  Detroit,  and  reached  home 
apparently  with  vigor  unbroken. 

Let  this  outline  serve  as  a  fair  sample  of  pioneer 
experience  in  those  dreadful  years.  Boon  and  Ken- 
ton  were  leaders  ;  of  the  deeds  and  hardships  of 
lesser  men  and  of  the  wives  and  children,  there  is 
no  lack  of  record.  We  pass  now  to  the  career 
of  the  man  who  in  brain  and  force  was  superior 
to  them  all,  the  real  history-maker  of  the  period 
and  the  region. 

In  1762,  defeated  France  ceded  to  Spain  New 
Orleans  and  its  neighborhood,  containing  possibly 
ten  thousand  people,  and  gave  up  also  the  vast 
undefined  territory  west  of  the  Mississippi,  the 
motive  being  to  propitiate  a  power  whose  help 
she  greatly  needed.  In  1765,  St.  Ange,  giving 
up  Fort  Chartres  to  the  Highlanders,  surrendered 
the  last  French  post  in  the  Mississippi  Valley. 
St.  Ange  withdrew  to  St.  Louis,  where  the  year 
before  Laclede  had  established  himself.  At  St. 
Louis  and  at  Ste.  Genevieve  to  the  south  of  it, 
a  settlement  near  lead  mines  which  had  come 
to  be  worked,  there  soon  gathered  a  population 
of  perhaps  a  thousand  French,  many  of  them 
refugees  who  retired  beyond  the  river  to  escape 
British  domination.  Kaskaskia  and  Cahokia, 
however,  on  the  eastern  bank,  in  the  immensely 
fertile  "  American  Bottom,"  maintained  their 
existence,  as  did  also  Vincennes  farther  east  on 


1777]  FRENCH  IN  ILLINOIS  79 

the  Wabash.  Some  trace,  also,  of  the  French 
occupancy  remained  on  the  Illinois,  in  the  old 
haunts  of  La  Salle  and  Tonti.  Altogether  there 
may  have  been  scattered  about  east  of  the  river 
twenty-five  hundred  French.  At  New  Orleans 
and  also  in  the  upper  settlements  there  was  a 
considerable  element  of  negro  slaves  ;  the  upper 
settlements,  too,  contained  a  large  Indian  admix- 
ture. At  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  these 
Creole  clusters  had  changed  little  from  their  old 
condition.  The  British  government  had  sought 
to  pursue  toward  them  a  conciliatory  policy.  The 
Quebec  Act,  which  was  in  force  in  the  West  as 
well  as  in  Canada,  left  the  French  undisturbed 
in  their  religion,  their  local  government,  and  their 
social  life.  The  village  priest  retained  all  his 
former  authority  ;  the  notary  was  still  at  hand  for 
all  civil  transactions  ;  and  though  the  French  com- 
mandant was  replaced  by  a  military  officer  who 
flew  the  English  flag,  the  officer  was  sometimes  a 
Frenchman  who  had  taken  the  oath  of  allegiance 
to  Great  Britain  and  was  therefore  trusted.  The 
old  idyllic  life  went  forward  unchanged  from 
what  it  was  when  the  Bourbon  lilies  were  float- 
ing. The  verandahed  cabins  stood  irregularly 
along  the  village  streets,  on  the  prairie,  or  in 
the  clearing.  Always  close  at  hand  ran  the  great 
river,  or  some  full  affluent  of  it,  the  highway  for 
all.  Barter,  hunting,  and  trapping  were  the  seri- 
ous pursuits  more  often  than  agriculture.  On  the 


80       THE  UNITED  STATES  TOOK  HOLD    [1777 

saints'  days  came  service  and  procession ;  and  later, 
to  the  sound  of  violins  and  flutes,  the  dancers 
swayed  and  tripped  until  late  into  the  night. 

The  War  of  the  Kevolution  in  the  West  was 
destined  to  be  by  no  means  one  of  defense  entirely. 
George  Rogers  Clark,  who  had  fixed  his  station  at 
the  rapid  known  as  the  Falls  of  the  Ohio,  where 
Louisville  now  stands,  conceiving  that  something 
might  be  done  to  win  the  great  country  stretching 
north  and  west,  then  the  seat  of  powerful  Indian 
confederacies,  with  the  Creole  villages  scattered 
among  them,  heard  in  1777,  from  spies  whom  he 
had  sent  out,  that  the  French  were  lukewarm  to 
the  English,  and  might  perhaps  be  won  by  a  bold 
course  to  the  new  government,  Hard-pressed  Ken- 
tucky could  spare  no  men  for  an  expedition ;  so 
Clark,  taking  the  Wilderness  Trail  in  the  com- 
pany of  a  crowd  of  disheartened  settlers  who  were 
returning,  made  his  way  in  the  fall  of  1777  to 
Virginia,  where  he  submitted  to  Governor  Patrick 
Henry  a  scheme  for  northwestern  conquest.  Bur- 
goyne's  surrender  made  the  world  hopeful.  Clark 
was  commissioned  colonel  and  authorized  to  raise 
seven  companies  of  fifty  men  each  for  his  enter- 
prise. His  recruiting-ground,  however,  must  be 
west  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  the  demands  of  the  war  in 
the  East  making  the  restriction  necessary.  Clark 
with  difficulty  mustered  four  small  companies, 
about  half  of  the  authorized  number.  But  with 
these  he  embarked  on  "  broad-horns,"  the  square- 


1778]  GEORGE  ROGERS  CLARK  81 

bowed  scows  of  the  period,  at  Red  Stone  Old  Fort 
on  the  Monongahela ;  and  taking  on  stores  at  Pitts- 
burg,  twenty  miles  below,  and  again  at  Wheeling, 
reached  at  last  the  Falls  of  the  Ohio.  The  French 
alliance,  news  of  which  came  to  him  just  in  time, 
was  a  most  fortunate  circumstance.  The  Jiabi- 
tans  would  certainly  not  be  disinclined  to  strike 
hands  with  those  whom  King  Louis  had  taken  into 
friendship. 

Clark  pressed  forward  with  great  energy. 
Weeding  out  of  his  command  all  poor  and  muti- 
nous material,  on  a  June  day  in  1778,  with  two 
hundred  picked  men,  he  shot  the  Falls  of  the 
Ohio,  and  sailed  downward  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Tennessee.  Fearing  to  ascend  the  Mississippi  to 
Kaskaskia,  the  point  to  be  first  assailed,  lest  trad- 
ing boats  might  give  warning  of  his  approach, 
Clark  marched  northward  through  the  woods  from 
the  Ohio.  He  had  four  good  captains,  and  the 
prestige  of  the  commander  increased  with  each 
day.  With  scouts  well  ahead  he  pushed  through 
the  heavy  woods  out  at  last  on  to  the  prairie, 
where  obstacles  were  fewer,  and  on  July  4,  reached 
the  Kaskaskia  only  three  miles  from  the  French 
town.  The  British  commandant,  the  Creole  Roche- 
blave,  who  was  sturdily  faithful  to  his  new  alle- 
giance, had  four  times  as  many  men,  French  and 
Indians,  as  had  Clark.  The  emergency  demanded 
a  surprise;  after  which,  Rocheblave  being  once 
disposed  of,  a  bold  face  on  the  part  of  the  assail- 


82       THE  UNITED  STATES  TOOK  HOLD    [1778 

ants,  and  the  lukewarmness  of  the  French  in  their 
allegiance,  might  be  reckoned  on  to  bring  about 
for  the  Americans  a  happy  issue. 

Clark's  management  was  a  mixture  of  address 
and  audacity.  According  to  the  picturesque  story,1 
after  surrounding  the  town  with  part  of  his  little 
army,  he  advanced  with  the  rest  directly  upon  it.  A 
dance  was  going  on,  strangers  having  come  in  from 
the  hamlets  about.  Clark  went  within  the  pali- 
sade entirely  alone,  and,  guided  by  the  music  and 
laughter,  made  his  way  to  the  place  of  assembly. 
He  took  up  his  post  in  the  doorway,  his  figure, 
though  unfamiliar,  not  at  first  attracting  attention. 
But  before  long,  as  the  young  leader's  tall,  gaunt 
frame  stood  revealed  in  the  light,  an  Indian 
crouching  on  the  floor,  after  a  sharp  scrutiny, 
sprang  to  his  feet  with  a  war-whoop  and  pointed 
out  the  intruder.  All  was  panic  at  once ;  but 
Clark,  unmoved,  with  arms  folded,  in  a  voice  of 
command,  bade  the  crowd  to  go  on  with  their 
dancing,  but  to  take  note  that  they  now  danced 
not  as  subjects  of  King  George,  but  as  Virginians. 
Clark's  men  now  rushed  up  with  all  promptness ; 
the  head-men  were  seized,  chief  of  all  Kocheblave, 
who  was  taken  in  bed  ;  the  weapons  were  captured, 
and  the  town  was  at  the  mercy  of  the  assailants. 
Father  Gibault,  the  priest,  a  man  of  force  and 
influence,  having  been  assured  that  the  Catholic 
faith  should  be  respected,  became  an  active  friend 
of  the  Americans,  inducing  his  flock  to  accept  the 

1  Too  probably  apocryphal 


1778]      %  ILLINOIS  CAPTURED  83 

change  of  masters  without  regret.  Rocheblave 
alone  stood  firm  amidst  the  general  yielding,  being 
sent  as  a  prisoner  to  Virginia ;  his  property  was 
confiscated,  his  slaves  selling  for  X500,  which 
went  as  prize  money  to  Clark's  soldiers. 

A  detachment  pushing  north  to  Cahokia,  that 
settlement  was  won  with  equal  ease.  Father  Gi- 
bault  himself  undertook  to  gain  over  Vincennes, 
which  had  been  committed  by  the  British  to  a 
Creole  garrison.  Making  his  way  across  the  coun- 
try to  the  Wabash,  and  gathering  the  people  into 
the  church,  he  announced  what  had  been  done  afc 
Kaskaskia  and  recommended  a  similar  course. 
Why  should  the  French  adhere  to  the  British  ? 
At  Saratoga,  the  preceding  October,  their  Gen- 
eral Burgoyne  had  met  with  a  great  disaster.  The 
French  king  had  taken  America  into  his  friend- 
ship and  protection.  With  the  Americans  all 
Frenchmen  should  cast  in  their  lot.  Father 
Gibault's  eloquence  carried  the  day  at  once  ;  the 
American  flag  was  hoisted  joyfully,  and  by  the 
beginning  of  August  the  priest  himself  brought 
back  to  Clark  news  of  his  success. 

All  had  gone  well  with  Clark,  but  his  situa- 
tion demanded  prudent  management.  The  term 
of  his  men  was  about  to  expire  ;  at  best  they  were 
but  a  handful.  There  was  no  chance  of  reinforce- 
ment from  Kentucky  or  Virginia ;  the  govern- 
ment of  the  new  territory  was  to  be  provided  for 
where  the  British  and  Indians  threatened,  and  the 


84:       THE  UNITED  STATES  TOOK  HOLD    [1778 

French  were  friends  very  new  and  untried.  But 
Clark's  astuteness  was  as  marked  as  his  valor.  By 
gifts  and  promises  he  succeeded  in  retaining  about 
one  hundred  of  his  Virginians.  To  the  Creoles  he 
pretended  that  he  was  about  to  return  to  the  Falls 
of  the  Ohio,  being  confident  that  the  French  could 
protect  themselves  against  the  English  vengeance 
sure  to  fall  upon  them  for  the  course  they  had 
taken.  They  were  panic-stricken  at  the  thought 
of  his  going,  and  entreated  him  urgently  to  re- 
main. Clark  yielded  at  last  with  pretended  reluc- 
tance, exacting  beforehand  pledges  of  faithful 
support.  He  recruited  his  companies  with  young 
Creoles,  so  leavening  the  mass  with  his  Virginia 
veterans,  and  disciplining  all  so  rigidly,  that  his 
composite  army  became  in  a  high  degree  effective. 
One  of  his  captains,  Leonard  Helm,  put  in  com- 
mand at  Vincennes,  managed  the  Wabash  region 
with  great  address.  On  the  other  side  the  Span- 
ish commander  at  St.  Louis  was  very  cordial  to 
the  new  order,  as  it  was  established  close  at  hand 
to  him  across  the  river  at  Cahokia.  As  far  as  the 
French  were  concerned,  the  Northwest  seemed  to 
be  thoroughly  gained  in  those  few  summer  weeks. 
So  far  Clark's  campaign  had  been  a  promenade. 

The  Indians  were  now  to  be  dealt  with,  a  much 
more  difficult  problem  than  Clark  had  yet  con- 
fronted. The  tribes  had  hated  the  Americans, 
the  "  Long  Knives  "  as  they  called  them,  but  had 
been  friendly  to  the  French  and  Spaniards. 


1778]  THE  INDIANS  WON  85 

Should  they  now,  like  their  friends,  go  over  to  the 
Long  Knives,  or  persist  in  their  hatred  ?  In  their 
embarrassment  the  savages  assembled  in  great 
numbers  at  Cahokia,  representatives  coming  from 
regions  far  distant.  From  the  East  came  warriors 
neighbors  of  the  Iroquois ;  from  the  West  Paw- 
nees, the  terrible  horse  Indians  of  the  plains ; 
while  from  the  North,  Sauks,  Winnebagoes,  finally 
O  jib  ways  and  Sioux,  convened  about  the  council- 
fire.  So  it  was  that  the  confederacies  holding  a 
vast  extent  of  country,  running  far  up  into  the 
northwest,  sat  down  together  for  a  solemn  talk. 
Clark  met  them  at  Cahokia,  having  behind  him 
but  a  handful  of  men.  Were  the  savages  to  be 
friends  or  foes  ?  All  was  in  indecision  :  a  breath 
might  sway  them  to  one  side  or  the  other.  Clark's 
management  of  the  situation  was  a  marvel, — 
a  combination  of  bravado  and  of  the  deftest  tact. 
On  the  third  day  of  the  council  certain  of  the  sav- 
ages set  out  to  seize  upon  him.  Clark,  however, 
anticipated  them,  snatching  out  the  offenders  as 
they  stood  in  the  midst  of  the  hesitating  crowd, 
and  casting  them  straightway  into  chains.  A  sign 
of  timidity  would  have  brought  upon  his  little 
company  a  rain  of  tomahawks.  With  assumed 
indifference,  he  would  not  even  seek  the  shelter 
of  the  fort,  but  gave  directions  for  a  dance  out- 
side, to  which  he  invited  the  Cahokians,  good  care 
being  taken  to  have  at  hand  a  picked  guard  with 
rifles  ready.  How  much  mirth  surpassed  appre- 


86       THE  UNITED  STATES  TOOK  HOLD    [1778 

hension  in  "  the  company  of  gentlemen  and  ladies  " 
is  nowhere  stated;  but  the  bravado  prevailed. 
Next  day  the  council  proceeded  with  all  the  circum- 
stance of  a  savage  ceremonial.  Clark  tossed 
among  them  a  bloody  war-belt,  defying  the  multi- 
tude. Dragging  part  of  his  chained  captives  into 
the  ring,  he  contemptuously  set  them  free,  shout- 
ing that  he  scorned  them  all.  He  said  he  came  not 
as  a  councilor  but  as  a  warrior.  To  those  who 
were  friendly  he  too  would  be  friendly ;  but  if 
they  chose  war,  he  would  call  from  the  Thirteen 
Council  -  Fires  warriors  so  numerous  that  they 
would  darken  the  land  ;  from  that  time  on  the  red 
people  would  hear  no  sound  but  that  of  the  birds 
which  lived  on  blood.  There  had  been  a  mist 
before  their  eyes,  but  he  would  clear  away  the 
cloud  and  show  them  the  rights  of  the  quarrel  be- 
tween the  Long  Knives  and  the  king  who  lived 
across  the  great  sea.  For  three  days  longer  they 
might  have  food  ;  then  he  should  enter  upon  the 
war-path,  and  let  them  beware  his  wrath. 

The  bold  front  carried  the  day.  A  peace-belt 
and  a  war-belt  being  now  offered,  the  Indians 
were  eager  to  accept  the  former.  Clark,  however, 
refused  to  smoke  the  calumet  with  them.  He  de- 
clined to  surrender  all  his  captives,  declaring  that 
two  must  die.  Two  young  braves  with  stoical 
fortitude  seated  themselves  on  the  ground  and 
with  heads  muffled  in  their  blankets  awaited  the 
death-stroke.  At  the  last  moment  their  lives  were 


1778]  THE  BRITISH  AROUSED  87 

magnanimously  spared.  His  purpose  having  been 
achieved  and  a  deep  impression  made,  Clark 
haughtily  accepted  peace  and  a  feast  cemented  the 
bond. 

Long  as  he  lived,  Clark  preserved  his  authority. 
His  name  was  one  to  conjure  with.  In  future 
councils,  whatever  dignitaries  might  be  on  the 
ground,  if  Clark  were  present  the  Indians  would 
address  no  one  but  him.  In  the  history  of  the 
frontier,  probably  no  other  man  ev^r  attained  an 
ascendency  over  the  Indians  so  deep  and  so  far- 
reaching.  After  Clark's  time,  indeed,  there  were 
bloody  wars,  —  wars  lasting  down  almost  to  the 
present  hour ;  but  from  the  day  of  the  Cahokia 
council  the  dominance  of  the  Americans  over  the 
tribes  became  fixed  and  definite.  From  that  time 
it  ceased  to  be  doubtful  that  the  whites  would 
prevail. 

The  French  and  Indians  had  been  won  by 
this  fine  blending  of  astuteness  and  courage,  but 
Clark  had  much  more  to  do.  Hamilton  at 
Detroit  had  been  astounded  at  the  news  from  the 
Kaskaskia  and  the  Wabash ;  he  was,  however, 
resourceful  and  energetic,  and  delivered  his  coun- 
ter-stroke without  delay.  Mustering  a  force  of 
several  hundred  Detroit  Indians,  with  five  or  six 
score  whites,  for  the  most  part  Creoles  of  Detroit, 
but  including  thirty-six  British  regulars,  he  set 
out  for  Vincennes  in  October,  1778,  by  the  portage 
of  the  Maumee.  At  the  first  news  of  his  coming, 


88       THE  UNITED  STATES  TOOK  HOLD    [1779 

Helm,  Clark's  captain  at  Vincennes,  was  aban- 
doned by  his  company  of  Frenchmen.  He  was 
utterly  alone  and  straightway  captured  with  the 
post,  which  he  had  no  means  to  defend.  The  ha- 
bitans  professed  the  utmost  penitence,  and  Hamil- 
ton felt  entirely  secure.  The  Illinois  French,  too, 
were  panic-struck ;  and  as  winter  came  on,  Clark's 
conquest  seemed  on  the  point  of  being  canceled 
as  easily  as  it  had  come  about.  Hamilton  looked 
forward  to  driving  in  the  American  posts  as  soon 
as  spring  should  come,  and  destroying  everything 
west  of  the  Alleghanies.  War-belts  were  sent 
to  the  southern  Indians  inviting  cooperation.  In 
January,  1779,  Clark  himself  was  nearly  cap- 
tured by  one  of  Hamilton's  parties  on  the  road 
between  Kaskaskia  and  Cahokia.  How  Clprk 
met  the  crisis  is  an  interesting  story. 

Now  appears  on  the  scene  a  pleasant  figure, 
Fran£ois  Vigo,  an  Italian,  who  had  come  to  New 
Orleans  in  a  Spanish  regiment,  and  who  after- 
wards went  northward  to  become  one  of  the  most 
enterprising  traders  of  the  time.  His  name,  for 
a  number  of  years,  occurs  in  connection  with  vari- 
ous friendly  services  done  to  Americans,  —  a  kind 
and  cordial  ally,  whose  important  help,  rendered 
often  at  great  cost  and  peril  to  himself,  did  not 
receive  proper  recognition  until  1876,  when  a 
long  law-suit  was  finally  decided  at  St.  Louis  in 
favor  of  his  heirs.  It  was  almost  a  century  before 
that,  January  27,  1779,  that  Vigo,  escaping  from 


1779]  CLARK  ATTACKS  89 

captivity  at  Vincennes,  brought  word  to  Clark 
that  Hamilton  at  the  moment  had  but  eighty  men 
upon  whom  he  could  rely,  though  in  the  spring  a 
large  reinforcement  would  come  for  the  purposed 
reconquest.  Clark  acted  with  all  promptness. 
In  spite  of  the  panic  of  the  Illinois  settlements, 
he  had  maintained  his  hold  on  the  bolder  French. 
It  is  said  also  that  the  handsome  young  leader  — 
he  was  but  twenty-seven  —  was  strongly  upheld 
by  the  Creole  girls,  who  wrought  upon  their 
sweethearts  to  stand  by  him.  Each  recruit  re- 
ceived a  little  flag,  which  Clark  afterward  put  to 
good  use.  He  set  out  at  once  in  February  with  a 
force  of  one  hundred  and  seventy,  mostly  French, 
but  with  his  Virginia  veteranship  distributed 
through  the  ranks  to  give  strength,  as  a  wire 
gives  strength  sometimes  when  run  through  a  cord 
of  cotton.  Father  Gibault,  a  constant  and  power- 
ful support,  blessed  the  little  army  as  it  set  out 
on  its  march  of  two  hundred  and  forty  miles  across 
country.  Before  setting  out,  Clark  had  built  and 
dispatched  the  Willing,  a  sort  of  flat-bottomed  gal- 
ley, armed  with  small  cannon  and  manned  by  a 
crew  of  forty,  whose  work  was  to  be  through  row- 
ing to  patrol  the  Ohio,  preventing  help  from  ascend- 
ing the  Wabash  to  the  British,  and  cooperating 
with  the  land  enterprise  as  circumstances  might 
determine. 

With   the   middle  of  February,  Clark's  army 
reached  the  "  drowned  lands  "  of  the  Wabash,  — 


90       THE  UNITED  STATES  TOOK  HOLD    [1779 

a  tract  low  and  flat,  which,  as  the  snow  melted  in 
the  breaking  up  of  winter,  had  become  transformed 
into  shallow  lakes,  stretching  sometimes  for  miles, 
with  only  here  and  there  a  protruding  patch  of 
earth.  The  details  of  the  comfortless,  desperate 
march  are  extraordinary.  They  waded  for  days 
through  the  ice-cold  flood,  the  water  coming  to 
their  waists,  to  their  breasts,  sometimes  to  their 
necks.  Those  short  in  stature  or  too  weak  to  bear 
it  were  packed  into  the  few  canoes  or  pirogues 
which  they  laid  hands  on.  If  by  chance  they 
reached  a  protruding  bank,  the  fear  of  exciting 
alarm  at  Vincennes,  now  close  at  hand,  forbade 
the  kindling  of  fire  or  shooting  at  game.  Birds 
and  beasts,  indeed,  had  pretty  much  disappeared. 
Noah's  dove  returned  to  the  ark  from  passage  over 
a  deluge  less  dismal  than  this.  Clark's  tact  and 
resource  were  never  more  remarkably  displayed 
than  here.  As  he  had  managed  the  Indians,  so 
now  he  knew  just  how  to  manage  the  Creoles.  He 
laughed  at  the  hardships ;  he  played  the  buffoon, 
blacking  his  face  and  breaking  in  upon  the  dis- 
consolate crowd  with  horse-play.  Mounting  "a 
little  antic  drummer,"  a  valuable  ally  with  his 
pranks  in  the  strait,  on  the  shoulders  of  a  tall 
sergeant,  the  sergeant  dashed  ahead  into  depths 
where  the  little  fellow  would  have  found  no 
bottom.  Meantime  the  drum  rattled  on  merrily, 
and  Clark,  striking  up  a  song  or  a  cheer,  plunged 
after,  making  light  of  everything.  But  behind 


1779]  AT  VINCENNES  91 

the  forced  lightness  there  was  a  stern  hand. 
Twenty-five  picked  men  formed  a  rear-guard  with 
orders  to  slay  any  one  that  faltered.  After  some 
days  of  such  progress,  when  sometimes  it  had 
been  necessary  to  put  the  weaker  ones  between 
strong  men  and  hurry  them  back  and  forth  on 
the  shore  to  keep  the  blood  in  motion,  and  when 
starvation  seemed  close  at  hand,  the  prospect 
began  to  brighten.  Certain  Frenchmen  taken 
captive  made  it  known  that  Clark's  approach  was 
utterly  unsuspected,  and  that  the  hdbitans  of 
Vincennes  might  easily  be  won  if  they  were  sure 
of  protection.  A  canoe  paddled  by  squaws  being 
overtaken,  part  of  the  carcase  of  a  buffalo,  with 
corn,  tallow,  and  kettles,  reinforced  the  commis- 
sariat. They  had  heard  for  some  days  Hamil- 
ton's morning  and  evening  guns,  and  now  they 
saw  the  townspeople  outside  the  palisade.  Clark 
here  threw  off  concealment,  sending  in  one  of  his 
captives  among  the  French  with  a  letter  threat- 
ening vengeance  to  all  who  did  not  remain  in 
their  houses,  but  promising  all  favor  to  those 
who  submitted.  He  now  marched  directly  on  the 
town,  the  depression  of  his. soldiers  having  yielded 
to  high  spirits.  "  Every  man  now  feasted  his  eyes 
and  forgot  that  he  had  suffered  anything,  saying 
that  all  that  had  passed  was  owing  to  good  policy, 
and  nothing  but  what  a  man  could  bear,  and  that 
soldiers  had  no  right  to  think,  etc."  As  the  army 
advanced  among  trees  and  over  ridges;  a  shrewd 


92       THE  UNITED   STATES  TOOK  HOLD     [1779 

ruse  made  the  number  appear  much  larger  than 
it  really  was.  The  little  flags,  given  the  Creoles 
at  Kaskaskia  when  they  enlisted,  were  paraded  as 
ensigns  of  companies ;  the  ranks  marched  and 
countermarched  so  as  to  be  counted  three  or  four 
times  over ;  while  Clark  and  his  captains,  mounted 
on  horses  they  had  seized,  galloped  hither  and 
thither  as  if  ordering  a  vast  array. 

At  the  last  minute  Hamilton  had  been  aroused. 
He  sent  out  a  scouting  party,  which,  however, 
embarrassed  by  the  floods,  did  not  get  back.  The 
French  all  went  promptly  over  to  Clark,  supplying 
him  with  food,  ammunition,  and  recruits.  Hamil- 
ton undertook  to  defend  the  fort,  but  the  siege  was 
short  and  decisive.  Clark's  marksmen  picked  off 
the  gunners  through  the  port-holes  until  the  cannon 
were  silenced.  An  Indian  scalping  party  having 
returned  at  the  moment  of  the  attack  from  a  raid 
on  the  American  settlements,  bringing  their  scalps 
at  their  girdles,  Clark  seized  them  all.  Leading 
out  nine  of  the  savages  in  sight  of  the  fort,  he 
caused  them  to  be  tomahawked  and  their  bodies 
thrown  into  the  river.  Besides  that,  in  the  capture 
of  Vincennes  there  was  little  shedding  of  blood. 
Hamilton  surrendered,  going  as  a  captive  to  Vir- 
ginia. The  Willing  soon  appeared,  too  late  to 
help,  but  in  time  to  take  part  in  the  rejoicing.  To 
crown  all,  Clark's  doughty  captain,  Leonard  Helm, 
who  had  been  a  prisoner  of  the  British,  taking  a 
party  northward,  encountered  on  the  march  the 


1779]  CLARK'S  SUCCESS  93 

reinforcements  that  were  coming  down  from  De- 
troit. These  were  defeated,  and  supplies,  X10,000 
in  value,  taken.  All  this  was  distributed  as  prize- 
money,  making  the  success  complete.  Clark  re- 
ceived the  thanks  of  Virginia  through  Governor 
Patrick  Henry ;  but  his  best  reward  was  an  im- 
mense influence  and  popularity  among  French, 
Indians,  and  backwoodsmen,  throughout  the  West. 
Before  the  year  1779  ended,  he  was  once  more 
settled  at  the  Falls  of  the  Ohio. 

The  story  is  an  extraordinary  record  of  courage, 
address,  and  endurance.  Clark's  means  were 
insignificant,  but  it  would  be  hard  to  match  his 
achievement  in  American  history.  The  bloodshed 
was  but  trifling ;  the  forces  of  nature  were  over- 
come in  a  marvelous  way ;  tact  and  a  bold  front, 
rather  than  the  rifle,  carried  the  day  when  it  came 
to  the  opposition  of  men.  To  the  tale  of  danger 
runs  parallel  a  curious  obligate  of  dance,  high 
spirits,  and  laughter.  It  was  that  note  largely 
that  won  the  Creoles,  and  it  seems  to  have  come 
natural  to  him.  His  conviviality  led  to  drunk- 
enness, which  wrecked  his  later  life.  There  was 
yet  to  be  much  difficulty  in  the  Northwest.  The 
French  constantly  yearned  to  put  off  the  burden 
of  self-government  which  the  new  order  imposed, 
and  go  back  to  the  priest,  the  notary,  and  the 
despotic  commandant  of  their  old  estate.  The 
British  did  not  cease  from  troubling  until  near 
the  end  of  the  century,  when  the  Jay  treaty  settled 


94       THE  UNITED  STATES  TOOK  HOLD    [1780 

the  boundary.  The  Indians  have  continued  to 
be  a  source  of  danger  even  to  the  present  moment. 
But  from  the  time  of  Clark  there  has  been  no 
question  as  to  our  mastery  over  the  Northwest 
throughout  its  whole  extent.  To  the  north  of 
Lake  Superior  and  the  sources  of  the  Mississippi 
the  dominion  of  the  United  States  had  been  made 
to  extend,  never  afterward  to  be  seriously  ques- 
tioned. 

In  Monument  Square,  Indianapolis,  stands  the 
statue  of  Clark,  an  athletic  figure,  scarcely  past 
youth,  tall  and  sinewy,  with  a  drawn  sword,  in 
an  attitude  of  energetic  encouragement,  as  if  get- 
ting his  army  through  the  drowned  lands  of  the 
Wabash.  He  may  be  called  our  first  expan- 
sionist, spreading  as  he  did  the  authority  of  the 
Union  through  tracts  far  outside  the  patents  of 
the  Thirteen  Colonies. 

During  these  years  the  Watauga  men  had  been 
manifesting  a  fine  prowess,  though  the  results 
were  less  brilliant  than  in  the  Northwest.  The 
battle  of  King's  Mountain,  in  1780,  though  taking 
place  on  the  Atlantic  watershed,  on  the  frontier 
between  North  and  South  Carolina,  was  really 
decided  by  Holston  River  men,  who,  under  Sevier 
and  Isaac  Shelby,  going  eastward  through  the 
passes,  struck  the  blow  that  revived  the  failing 
cause  in  the  South.  Sevier  shows  greater  activity 
than  ever  in  these  years,  against  both  British  and 
Indians  ;  while  Robertson,  a  character  calmer  and 


1782]  FRONTIER  HARDSHIPS  95 

steadier,  in  1779,  conducts  westward  the  party 
that  founds  Nashville  in  the  great  bend  of  the 
Cumberland.  As  yet  for  the  borderers  there  was 
little  break  in  the  gloom.  The  tomahawk  was 
always  busy  about  the  trails  and  settlements.  But 
a  better  time  was  coming.  In  1779,  Spain  de- 
clared war  against  England,  and  a  force  from 
New  Orleans,  under  the  energetic  young  governor, 
Galvez,  campaigned  effectively  against  the  British 
about  Pensacola.  Though  the  winter  of  1779- 
1780  was  so  severe  that  the  buffalo  herded  with 
the  cattle  about  the  hay-stacks,  and  along  the 
trails  the  line  of  disheartened  and  returning  set- 
tlers choked  the  way,  the  tide  of  settlement  rose. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  Revolution,  there  were 
but  a  few  hundred  west  of  the  Alleghanies ;  at 
the  close,  the  number  had  risen  to  twenty-five 
thousand.  After  1782,  the  British  grip  relaxed. 
Clark  made  reprisals  in  the  Miami  country  for 
what  had  been  suffered,  and  Kentucky  was  never 
after  seriously  invaded. 

The  highway  westward  had  now  become  the 
Ohio  River,  the  Wilderness  Trail  through  Cum- 
berland Gap  proving  a  less  convenient  thorough- 
fare ;  and  the  usual  vehicle  of  conveyance  was 
the  flatboat.  A  typical  flatboat  of  these  early 
years  was  fifty-five  feet  long,  sixteen  feet  broad, 
with  a  draught  of  three  feet,  the  capacious  hull 
accommodating  under  its  roof  horses,  cattle,  and 
wagons,  as  well  as  their  owners.  With  a  good 


96       THE  UNITED  STATES   TOOK  HOLD    [1786 

stage  of  water  the  voyage  from  Pittsburg,  or  Red 
Stone  Old  Fort,  twenty  miles  above  on  the  Monon- 
gahela,  to  the  Falls  of  the  Ohio,  now  becoming 
a  lively  centre,  occupied  a  week  or  ten  days; 
with  low  water,  when  sandbars  might  obstruct,  a 
month  might  be  required.  The  sides  required  to 
be  built  high,  to  be  loopholed,  and  made  bullet 
proof  either  by  heavy  timbering  or  the  disposition 
of  the  cargo,  for  at  many  points  there  was  danger 
of  Indian  attack.  Of  course,  for  these  "  broad- 
horns  "  there  was  no  return  against  the  current ; 
they  were  broken  up  when  the  downstream  voy- 
age was  ended,  the  material  doing  service  in  a 
thousand  ways. 

The  critical  period  of  American  history,  the  years 
between  the  peace  of  1783  and  the  adoption  of  the 
Constitution,  was  not  less  disorderly  and  threat- 
ening in  the  Mississippi  Valley  than  in  the  East. 
In  1784,  the  Watauga  settlement,  which  had  been 
merged  in  North  Carolina,  constituted  itself  into 
the  State  of  Franklin,  whose  existence  was  chiefly 
signalized  by  violent  quarrels  among  its  leaders : 
at  the  head  of  one  faction  was  Sevier,  ever  com- 
bative. At  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution, 
Franklin  disappeared,  the  State  of  Tennessee  soon 
taking  shape,  with  Sevier,  who  became  an  ardent 
Federalist,  for  its  first  governor.  No  one  can  be 
blamed  that  in  those  days  loyalty  to  the  feeble 
Union  was  languid  and  a  strong  separatist  feeling 
rife.  The  Union  being  a  jelly,  what  credit  or 


1786]          WEAKNESS  OF  THE  NATION  97 

protection  could  it  offer  to  win  adherents?  In 
these  Western  communities,  some  favored  com- 
plete independence ;  some  would  have  gone  back 
with  equanimity  to  England ;  some,  again,  were 
ready  to  connect  themselves  with  Spain,  which 
held  New  Orleans  and  the  world  beyond  the  river. 
The  redoubtable  Clark  and  the  well-poised  Rob- 
ertson, even,  showed  Spanish  sympathies  ;  while 
Daniel  Boon,  finding  the  air  contaminated  lay  the 
swelling  immigration,  pushing  across  into  a  new 
wilderness,  became  a  Spanish  official,  far  up  the 
Missouri.  New  Madrid  sprang  up,  composed  of 
American  colonists  submitting  to  live  under  the 
Spanish  flag. 

The  dawn  of  a  better  day  was  seen  in  the  resig- 
nation by  the  States  to  the  general  government  of 
their  Western  claims.  Seven  of  the  thirteen  origi- 
nal States  laid  claim  to  tracts  extending  westward 
to  the  Mississippi  River,  —  New  York,  Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut,  Virginia,  Georgia,  North 
and  South  Carolina.  New  York's  assertion  was 
that  she  was  the  heir  of  the  Iroquois,  —  a  claim 
indeed  shadowy,  —  while  the  remaining  six  rested 
their  right  upon  their  original  charters.  Mary- 
land had  early  demanded  that  the  States  should 
give  up  their  separate  claims,  a  suggestion  which 
at  first  met  with  no  favor.  In  1780,  however, 
New  York  resigned  her  tract,  an  example  followed 
in  1784  by  Virginia,  in  1785  by  Massachusetts, 
in  1786  by  Connecticut  and  South  Carolina. 


98       THE  UNITED  STATES  TOOK  HOLD     [1786 

North  Carolina  held  out  till  1790.  The  United 
States  thus  came  into  possession  of  land  amount- 
ing to  200,000,000  of  acres,  recognized  even  then 
as  property  of  immense  value.  It  formed  a  noble 
resource  for  the  new  nation,  giving  it  means  to 
pay  its  debts,  an  enormous  burden  after  the  war, 
and  affording  a  chance  for  expansion.  Coeval 
with  the  beneficent  change  in  the  tenure  of  the 
territory  were  the  adoption  of  the  federal  Consti- 
tution and  the  passage  by  Congress  at  once  of  the 
Ordinance  of  1787,  events  pregnant  with  good. 
As  early  as  1784,  a  division  of  this  new  public 
domain,  which  at  that  time  had  become  only 
partly  federal,  was  projected,  chiefly  interesting, 
perhaps,  for  the  naming  of  the  commonwealths  to 
be,  —  a  naming  curiously  reflecting  the  feebleness 
that  prevailed.  Michigania  was  to  extend  from 
Lake  Michigan  to  the  Mississippi ;  Assenipia  lay 
south  of  this ;  Metropotamia  was  to  extend  along 
Lake  Erie  ;  Polypotamia  was  to  lie  south  of  this ; 
while  Pelisipia  was  still  further  down.  But  the 
map  was  to  be  saved  from  such  a  nomenclature. 

The  men  who  were  to  shape  the  greatness  of 
the  Mississippi  Valley  were  now  at  hand.  A 
rough  young  pioneer  was  making  himself  felt  in 
the  Watauga  and  Cumberland  country,  Andrew 
Jackson.  The  son  of  a  backwoods  preacher  in 
southwestern  Virginia,  Henry  Clay,  was  getting 
growth  and  experience  to  go  presently  to  Lexing- 
ton to  begin  a  memorable  life-work.  In  Ken- 


1784]  LINCOLN'S  FATHER  99 

tucky  the  father  of  Chief  Justice  Marshall  was 
opposing  separatism.  In  1784,  a  boy  six  years 
old  belonging  to  a  poor  white  family  just  arrived 
at  a  little  palisaded  hamlet  was  saved  from  the 
tomahawk  of  a  prowling  savage  by  a  lucky  shot 
from  the  rifle  of  an  elder  brother.  The  boy  thus 
saved  grew  up  to  become  the  father  of  Abraham 
Lincoln. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  CONSTITUTION  AND  THE  OKDINANCE  OF  1787 

THE  "  Bunch  of  Grapes  "  tavern  in  Boston, 
and  the  little  town  of  Rutland,  in  Worcester 
County,  Mass.,  are  places  to  be  remembered  as 
the  scenes  of  the  meetings  which  led  to  forming 
the  Ohio  Company,  the  earliest^^egigning  of 
which  is  referred  to  the  spring  of  1786.  Conti- 
nental officers,  more  than  half  of  them  from 
Massachusetts,  desired  to  change  the  paper  certifi- 
cates in  which  they  had  been  paid,  for  wild  lands. 
General  Rufus  Putnam,  a  man  of  good  sense  and 
with  a  good  record  of  service,  was  most  prominent ; 
they  memorialized  Congress  at  once,  and  Manas- 
seh  Cutler,  —  preacher,  lawyer,  doctor,  statesman, 
scientist,  land  speculator,  —  a  character  of  extraor- 
dinary versatility,  arrived  in  New  York  in  July 
of  that  year,  to  push  the  matter.  Eight  States 
only  were  represented  in  the  feeble  Congress. 
The  grant  of  land  was  made  with  only  one  dissent- 
ing vote.  Slavery  was  to  be  prohibited,  although 
a  majority  of  the  committee  were  Southern  men, 
Grayson  and  Richard  Henry  Lee,  of  Virginia, 
pressing  the  matter  with  especial  vigor.  No  such 


1787]  NORTHWEST  ORDINANCE  101 

important  attempt  at  settlement  beyond  the  Alle- 
ghanies  had  ever  before  been  attempted,  and  it 
became  the  occasion  in  the  following  year  of  the 
famous  Ordinance  of  1787,  which  ranks  among 
the  most  momentous  of  American  enactments, 
and  must  be  carefully  outlined. 

For  each  Territory  into  which  the  Northwest 
should  be  divided,  an  organization  was  laid  down 
with  governor,  secretary,  and  judges.  When  the 
population  reached  five  thousand  free  males,  a 
General  Assembly  was  to  be  constituted,  the  lower 
house  elective,  the  upper  house  appointive.  This 
body  was  to  have  power  to  elect  a  delegate  to 
Congress.  All  officials  must  be  landholders  in 
the  Territory ;  a  small  property  qualification  was 
also  to  be  a  condition  of  the  franchise.  There 
were  six  articles  in  the  compact  laid  down  by  the 
United  States  to  be  observed  by  the  people  to 
whom  it  granted  its  lands,  to  be  held  unalterable 
except  by  the  consent  of  both. 

1.  Complete  freedom  of  worship  and  religion 
was  extended  to  all  peaceable  and  orderly  persons. 

2.  Trial  by  jury,  habeas  corpus,  privilege  of 
the.  common  law,  the  right  of  proportionate  legis- 
lative representation  were  established. 

3.  Faith  was  to  be  kept  with  the  Indians,  and 
means  of  education  were  to  be  encouraged. 

4.  All  new  States  must  forever  form  part  of  the 
United  States. 

5.  Here  provision  was  made  for  the  formation 


102  THE  ORDINANCE  OF  1787  [1787 

of  not  less  than  three  or  more  than  five  new 
States  out  of  the  Northwest  territory.  A  condi- 
tion of  admission  to  the  Union  must  be  a  popula- 
tion of  not  less  than  60,000  ;  the  government  must 
be  republican,  and  the  new  States  were  to  be  in  all 
respects  equal  with  the  others. 

6.  It  was  ordained  that  there  should  never  be 
slavery  or  involuntary  servitude,  otherwise  than 
for  the  punishment  of  convicted  criminals.  Slaves 
fugitive  from  the  South,  however,  could  be  lawfully 
claimed  by  their  owners. 

Mr.  Roosevelt  declares  the  sixth  article  to  be 
the  greatest  blow  ever  struck  in  behalf  of  free- 
dom in  our  whole  history,  except  the  Emancipation 
Proclamation  of  Abraham  Lincoln.  The  docu- 
ment throughout  is  generally  esteemed  as  worthy 
to  stand  in  the  class  with  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, the  Constitution  itself,  and  Wash- 
ington's Farewell  Address.  The  conjunction  in 
the  same  year  of  two  enactments  so  memorable 
was  indeed  auspicious  of  good ;  and  it  was  the 
Mississippi  Valley  that  was  in  especial  to  reap 
the  harvest  from  this  fortunate  sowing.  A  fort- 
night after  its  passage  a  million  and  a  half  acres 
were  sold  to  the  Ohio  Company,  which  straight- 
way proceeded  to  establish  a  settlement  in  accord- 
dance  with  the  six  provisions. 

Two  years  before  the  passage  of  the  Ordinance, 
a  providential  basis  for  it  had  been  prepared  in  a 
happy  enactment  of  the  Congress  of  the  Confed- 


1788]  MARIETTA  FOUNDED  103 

eracy.     According  to  this,  surveys  of  the  great 
regionjwere_ta.be:,  conducted  by  a  corps  of  govern- 
ment engineers,  whpwere  to  divide  the  jgojmtry 
mto_rangeJs_  of  townships  six  miles  square.    TJiesg^ 
again  were  to  be  subdivided  into  square  mile  sec- 
tions,  all  to  be  carefully  numbered  ;  and  section 
sixteen  in  each  township  was  set  apart  for  schools. 
The  rest  of  the  land  was  open  for  sale  at  a  mini — 
mum  price  of  one  dollar  per  acre. 

The  first  party  of  the  Ohio  Company,  Revolu- 
tionary soldiers  who  had  exchanged  their  certifi- 
cates for  lands  beyond  the  mountains,  were  on 
their  way  west  before  1787  expired.  It  was  an 
admirable  company,  sturdy  and  intelligent  in  the—  - 
rank  and  file,  and  well  led.  By  February  of 
1788  they  had  reached  the  Youghiogheny,  where, 
building  boats  forty-eight  in  number,  they  started 
downstream  with  the  spring  flood.  On  the  7th 
of  April,  they  reached  the  mouth  of  the  Muskin- 
gum,  about  which  their  patent  lay,  and  Rufus 
Putnam  with  the  advance  party  stepped  ashore.  I 

Fort  Harmar,  an  important  post,  close  by,  across 
the  narrow  river,  afforded  protection.  The  spot 
where  the  adventurers  landed  was  occupied  by 
remarkable  and  mysterious  constructions  of  the 
mound-builders,  —  terraces,  embankments,  steep- 
sided  cones,  —  all  of  which  the  forest  had  covered. 
Here  they  felled  trees  and  built  their  cabins,  call- 
ing the  place  Marietta  after  Queen  Marie  Antoi- 
nette. In  July  appeared  the  governor  of  the 


104  THE  ORDINANCE  OF  1787  [1788 

Territory,  Arthur  St.  Clair,  a  brave  and  high- 
minded,  but  never  fortunate  soldier,  admitted  to 
the  friendship  and  confidence  of  Washington,  — 
a  man  who  resolutely  grappled  with  problems  for 
"which  his  capacity  was  quite  inadequate,  —  who 
was  never  dishonored,  though  undergoing  great 
disaster.  In  the  fall,  the  Symmes  purchase  was 
laid  out  farther  down  the  stream,  a  small  set- 
tlement upon  which  was  named  by  a  pedantic 
schoolmaster  L^s^m^Lyills,  the  town  opposite  the 
mouth  of  the  Licking.  This,  rechristened  by  St. 
Clair  Cincinnati,  became  the  first  capital  of  the 
Territory.  Shortly  after  Putnam's  arrival,  Manas- 
seh  Cutler,  too,  journeyed  thither,  noting  in  his 
diary  as  indicative  of  permanence  that  the  women 
were  coming  with  the  men,  that  the  fields  were 
already  sown,  that  homes  were  forming.  One  is 
glad  to  encounter  in  Cutler's  record  Fra^ois 
Vigo,  the  old  friend  of  George  Rogers  Clark. 
Vigo  took  Cutler  into  his  ten-oared  barge,  which 
at  the  same  time  had  a  sail.  With  the  rowers 
and  an  occasional  favoring  breeze,  they  made  their 
way  for  three  weeks  upstream.  Cutler's  pages 
give  a  pleasant  picture  of  the  wealth  and  hospi- 
tality of  the  friendly  Creole  trader. 

Though,  from  the  first,  results  were  happy  in 
the  case  of  the  Ohio  Company,  much  misery  and 
iniquity  followed  from  unwise  ways  of  opening 
the  public  domain.  The  practice  of  making  large 
grants  to  individuals  or  private  corporations  in 


1789]  GALLIPOLIS    FOUNDED  105 

return  for  insignificant  sums,  or  for  services  often 
alleged  rather  than  real,  has  from  the  foundation 
of  the  country  led  to  trouble.  It  has  proved  far 
better  to  part  with  the  public  land  in  small  quan- 
tities, at  reasonable  prices,  to  actual  settlers ;  but 
the  lesson  has  been  learned  only  slowly.  Now 
almost  contemporary  with  the  establishment  of  the 
Ohio  Company,  one  of  the  worst  of  such  schemes 
was  exploited,  which  may  stand  as  a  type.  The 
Scioto  Company  having  obtained  a  vast  tract 
about  the  river  of  that  name,  its  agents  appeared 
in  France  just  after  the  outbreak  of  the  French 
Beyolution.  The  chief  promoter  was  Joel  Barlow, 
a  name  little  honored  in  literature,  and  still  less 
in  the  world  of  affairs.  Loquacious  and  plausi- 
ble, he  impressed  many  Frenchmen,  the  disposi- 
tion toward  America  in  those  days  being  espe- 
cially favorable.  Some  hundreds,  won  by  the 
golden  picture,  emigrated,  enriching  the  unscru- 
pulous managers  with  the  purchase-money.  In 
great  part  they  were  to  the  last  degree  ill  adapted 
to  life  in  the  woods,  —  carvers,  gilders,  dancing- 
masters,  barbers,  men  trained  only  in  arts  suited 
to  an  elaborate,  indeed  a  finical,  civilization. 
When  dropped  at  last,  after  great  hardships  and 
losses,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Scioto,  the  story  of 
their  struggle  with  the  harsh  conditions  would  be 
comical  if  it  were  not  so  pathetic.  They  melted 
away  at  last,  for  the  most  part,  —  a  few  reaching 
France  once  more,  a  larger  number,  the  French 


106  THE  ORDINANCE  OF  1787  [1789 

settlements  in  the  Wabash  and  Illinois  country. 
The  name  Gallipolis  survives  as  a  souvenir  of  a 
swindling  enterprise  which  caused  much  wretched- 
ness, though  the  government  did  what  it  could  by 
way  of  relief. 

The  frontier  society  was  slowly  becoming  better 
ordered  and  more  stable,  but  the  terrible  enemy 
still  pressed.  Year  after  year,  with  dreadful 
monotony,  the  war-whoop  sounded  far  and  wide. 
In  the  seven  years  preceding  1790,' fifteen  hun- 
dred are  said  to  have  been  slain  in  Kentucky 
alone,  and  on  the  roads  leading  thither.  Where 
the  settlers  escaped  death,  they  were  often  stripped 
of  means  ;  an  item  of  the  rapine  is  that  twenty 
thousand  horses  went  to  the  thieves.  Trail  and 
stream  were  equally  unsafe.  From  any  thicket 
might  come  a  rifle-shot ;  for  war-parties,  perhaps  of 
only  two  or  three,  crept  with  a  stealth  that  eluded 
every  sentinel  far  within  the  line  of  outposts. 
The  flatboats,  as  they  floated  down  the  Ohio,  were 
sometimes  lashed  together  three  abreast ;  in  the 
centre  one  the  women  and  children  and  the  more 
precious  freight :  outside,  the  fighting  men,  pro- 
tected through  high  bulwarks  from  shots  from 
either  shore,  aimed  their  own  rifles  through  port- 
holes blocked  with  timbers,  or  bales  or  boxes  taken 
from  the  cargo.  Sometimes  on  the  bank  would 
stand  a  wretched  white  man  or  woman,  tattered, 
starved,  apparently  a  captive  just  escaped  from 
the  savages,  who  held  out  hands  imploringly  to  be 


1790]          UNDER  THE  CONSTITUTION  107 

rescued.  If,  however,  the  boatmen  yielded  to 
humane  feelings  and  turned  their  craft  toward 
the  suppliant,  a  sudden  rain  of  lead  from  an 
ambush  close  by  would  sweep  the  deck,  and  a  score 
of  painted  fiends  board  the  craft  for  its  capture. 
The  miserable  suppliant  on  the  shore,  it  would 
appear,  had  been  the  savage's  decoy,  forced  at  the 
knife's  point  to  lure  his  fellows  to  destruction ; 
then  doomed  to  go  back  to  a  bondage  whose  hor- 
rors were  in  no  way  relieved.  The  persistence, 
the  cunning,  the  boldness,  the  ferocity  of  the  foe 
seemed  to  have  no  limits. 

After  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  the  war- 
fare of  the  whites  gradually  became  more  system- 
atic and  effective.  The  country  was  beginning  to 
stand  on  its  legs  ;  the  regular  army  entered  on  the 
scene,  at  first  with  staggering,  meeting  much  dis- 
aster, but  growing  without  break  in  might  and 
resolution,  until,  reaching  full  efficiency,  it  gained 
complete  success.  The  names  of  Harmar  and  St. 
Clair,  the  earliest  commanders  under  the  Constitu- 
tion, are  associated  with  defeat ;  they  were,  how- 
ever, brave,  if  not  skillful,  officers ;  and  their  ill 
success  was  due  to  the  fact  that  they  were  set  to  do 
work  for  which  they  were  not  trained.  Ujjl  JJ2P 
thejrear  of  St^  Clair's  defeat,  a  most  gloomy  page 
in  the  history  of  the  Mississippi  Valley.  The 
Indians,  stimulated  no  doubt  by  British  agents,  — 
for  Great  Britain  claimed,  long  after  the  peace, 
that  treaty  conditions  were  not  observed,  and  much 


108  THE  ORDINANCE  OF  1787  [1791 

preferred  to  have  the  West  remain  a  fur-yielding 
wilderness  rather  than  become  the  seat  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  civilization,  —  abated  no  whit  in  their  fury. 
After  a  lame  attempt  by  Harmar,  St.  Clair  was  set 
to  repel  and  punish.  His  force  was  of  the  poorest, 
two  weak  regiments  of  regulars  recruited  east  of 
the  mountains,  —  often  men  disabled  by  vice, 
often  unused  to  arms,  the  entire  mass  without  fron- 
tier experience ;  besides  these  a  horde  of  militia 
enlisted  for  a  short  term,  undisciplined  and  some- 
times mutinous.  The  entire  army  at  the  start  did 
not  reach  two  thousand  in  number.  Frontiers- 
men of  the  militia  and  regulars  were  on  the  worst 
possible  terms.  Though  game  abounded,  the  force 
in  general  were  too  poor  marksmen  to  obtain 
it,  and  hunters  had  to  be  detailed  to  procure  sup- 
plies. St.  Clair  himself  was  elderly  and  sick; 
Butler,  his  second  in  command,  was  brave  enough, 
but  otherwise  incompetent.  Through  the  energy 
mainly  of  Winthrop  Sargent,  adjutant-general, 
the  expedition,  which  had  rendezvoused  in  the 
Miami  country,  was  able  in  November  to  stumble 
northward  toward  the  watershed  drained  on  the 
south  by  the  Wabash  and  on  the  north  by  the 
Maumee.  No  scouts  were  thrown  forward.  When 
far  advanced  in  the  forest,  sixty  militia,  deserting, 
set  out  for  home ;  whereupon  St.  Clair,  blind  to 
his  dangers,  sent  back  after  them  one  of  his  regi- 
ments of  regulars,  half  of  the  only  body  of  troops 
on  which  he  could  at  all  rely.  On  November  4, 


1791]  ST.  CLAIR'S  DEFEAT  109 

having  reached  the  east  fork  of  the  Wabash,  the 
army,  reduced  now  to  fourteen  hundred,  paraded 
at  dawn,  for  St.  Clair  meditated  a  stroke  upon 
the  Indian  towns  now  not  far  off.  The  stroke 
fell,  but  the  gallant  incompetent  did  not  adminis- 
ter it.  The  woods  of  a  sudden  were  alive  with 
foes,  who  smote  as  adroitly  and  boldly  as  those  who 
annihilated  Braddock.  The  army  fought  well, 
both  officers  and  men.  If  only  courage  had  been 
enough  !  Surrounded  upon  all  sides,  the  troops 
were  forced  back  on  to  a  hillock  in  the  centre. 
They  stood  at  last  in  two  ranks,  back  to  back, 
facing  their  enemy  on  either  side.  Butler  paced 
back  and  forth  in  front  of  one  rank,  St.  Clair  in 
front  of  the  other.  The  respectable  old  general  in 
the  cocked  hat  of  the  Continentals,  with  his  gray 
hair  gathered  in  a  queue,  stemmed  misfortune  as 
stubbornly  and  as  impotently  as  he  had  stemmed 
misfortune  before  on  Revolutionary  fields.  But- 
ler was  soon  mortally  wounded,  laughing,  it  is 
said,  as  he  lay  dying,  at  a  young  cadet  who  cried 
at  a  light  touch  from  a  spent  ball.  The  clothes 
of  St.  Clair  were  shot  through  eight  times,  and  a 
lock  of  his  hair,  escaped  from  his  pigtail,  was  car- 
ried away ;  but  his  body  was  unharmed.  All  be- 
ing lost,  with  the  third  of  his  men  that  remained, 
the  general  broke  his  way  back  to  the  road  by 
which  he  had  approached.  Fortunately  the  In- 
dians, surfeited  for  the  moment  with  slaughter, 
preferred  to  plunder  the  abandoned  camp  rather 


110  THE  ORDINANCE  OF  1787  [1791 

than  to  pursue.  The  survivors  of  the  battle, 
therefore,  reached  the  settlements,  starving  and 
disheartened.  Probably  the  Indian  assailants 
did  not  number  half  the  force  of  St.  Clair ;  their 
loss  probably  was  not  one  twentieth  of  what  he 
suffered.  The  misfortune  of  Braddock  was  par- 
alleled ;  an  American  army  never  underwent  de- 
feat more  mortifying.  When  word  at  last  reached 
President  Washington,  it  is  said  to  have  called  out 
from  him  one  of  those  volcanic  explosions  of  wrath 
of  which  he  was  capable.  The  commanding  chief 
of  the  foe  was  probably  Little  Turtle,  a  Miami ; 
besides  Miamis,  Delawares,  Shawnees,  and  Wy- 
andots  were  present;  a  few  Iroquois,  too,  may 
have  given  edge  to  the  sharpness  of  the  stroke. 

St.  Glair's  defeat,  in  which  ended  the  first  mili- 
tary enterprise  of  the  newly  constituted  Union, 
was  a  sad  shock  and  seemed  full  of  ill  omen.  The 
Eastern  communities  were  quite  indifferent  to 
what  happened  beyond  the  mountains,  and  ready 
to  patch  up  peace  on  almost  any  terms.  Eecourse 
was  had  at  first  to  negotiations  and  treaties,  al- 
ways with  savages  productive  of  unsatisfactory 
results ;  the  envoys  were  in  some  instances  slain. 
Meantime  the  irregular  war  of  the  frontier  raged 
on.  Relations  with  Great  Britain  became  much 
strained,  both  sides  alleging  that  the  conditions 
of  the  peace  of  1783  were  not  observed.  The 
Indians,  made  arrogant  by  success,  were  supplied 
at  British  posts  with  weapons  and  powder  ;  while 


1794]  WAYNE'S  VICTORY  111 

their  ruthless  activity  was  connived  at,  if  not  di- 
rectly stimulated.  A  jTggyjjjforjLtO-  suppress  thftm 
became  imperative,  and  this  time  it  was  Wayne, 
"  Mad  Anthony  "  of  Stony  Point,  who  was  to 
lead,  —  a  man  no  braver  than  St.  Clair,  but  full 
of  native  power,  developed  in  the  best  school. 
Profiting  in  every  step  that  he  took  by  the  dismal 
experience  of  his  predecessor,  he  first  trained  his 
army  of  three  thousand  by  discipline  steady  and 
severe.  Landing  from  the  flatboats  that  brought 
his  army  from  Pittsburg,  he  marched  in  the  track 
of  St.  Clair  through  the  Miami  country  until 
he  reached  the  Jjpot  where  his  predecessor  had 
suffered.  Here  Wayne  built  Fort  Recovery,  the 
name  betokening  the  new  heart  which  was  being 
put  into  the  cause.  Continuing  northward  until 
he  had  passed  just  beyond  the  Mississippi  water- 
shed into  the  valley  of  the  Maumee,  he  fought, 
August  20,  1794vthe 


British  post  was  close  by,  from  the  walls  of  which 
the  garrison  were  sullen  spectators  of  a  victory 
which  they  could  hardly  rejoice  over.  The  pun- 
ishment was  most  thorough.  A  war  of  forty  years 
came  to  a  close.  The  pioneer  and  his  wife  could 
at  last  sleep  in  peace,  turning  from  the  loophole 
and  the  rifle  to  plough,  loom,  and  anvil.  Now  came 
pleasanter  days.  The  savages,  to  be  sure,  made 
new  attempts,  but  these  were  easily  thwarted. 
The  Indian  power  in  the  eastern  Mississippi  Val- 
ley had  been  completely  broken. 


112  THE   ORDINANCE  OF  1787  [1796 

Population  now  rapidly  increased,  and  life  be- 
came better  ordered.  Kentucky  had  become  a 
State_in  1792  and  Tennessee  in  1796,  seventy-six 
thousand  people  having  now  filled  up  the  country. 
The  first  governor  of  Tennessee^a^nQjother_than 
old  John  Sevjer,  unbroken  yet  after  long  fightings 
with  Indians,  with  British,  and  with  his  fellow 
backwoodsmen.  A  raw  and  fiery  young  man,  with 
hair  always  bristling  like  the  comb  of  an  irate 
game-cock  above  a  thin,  intense  face,  Andrew 
Jackson  became  the  first  representative  inJCon- 
gress.  In  1796,  the  treaty  negotiated  with  Eng- 

id  by  Tohn  Jay^ajT^romiilfrated, «[  treatyTTit- 
terly  denounced  in  its  time,  both  East  and  West ; 
but  it  assigned  to  us  definitely  the  line  of  the 
Lakes  on  the  north,  and  brought  to  an  end  the 
uncertainty  as  to  boundary  which  had  caused  so 
much  discomfort  and  peril.  Pinckney  about 
the  same  time,  by  treaty  with  Spain,  established 
the  southern  boundary,  making  definitely  Ameri- 
can the  tract  along  the  great  river  on  which  in 
1798  was  organized  the  Territory  of  Mississippi. 
Beyond  the  stream  all  was  in  Spanish  hands ;  at 
the  extreme  south  also,  New  Orleans,  on  the  east- 
ern shore,  was  a  strongly  maintained  Spanish  post. 
At  St.  Louis,  the  Spanish  commandant,  when 
George  Rogers  Clark  was  operating  on  the  oppo- 
site shore,  had  been  friendly.  The  mood  had  now 
changed,  the  Spanish  governors,  notably  Caron- 
delet,  showing  a  hostile  spirit.  A  pressure,  in  fact, 


1796]         MOUTH  OF  THE  MISSISSIPPI  113 

was  beginning,  out  of  which  was  to  come  a  great 
result.  It  was  growing  plain  that  so  long  as  the 
mouth  of  the  Mississippi  was  in  foreign  hands, 
the  increasing  multitude  in  the  valley  which  found 
through  that  its  natural  pathway  to  the  sea  and 
the  world  must  suffer.  The  commerce  ready  to 
pour  toward  the  Gulf  was  hampered  by  Spanish 
interference.  A  right  to  search  was  claimed  ;  cus- 
toms were  exacted  ;  the  passage  might  be  barred 
by  a  magistrate's  caprice.  Exasperation  grew, 
and  again  and  again  one  finds  record  of  enterprises, 
more  or  less  definite,  for  getting  rid  of  the  hin- 
drance, with  which  sometimes  names  of  note  are 
connected.  Blount,  United  States  senator  from 
Tennessee,  a  most  worthy  figure,  was  expelled  from 
the  Senate  for  intriguing  against  Spain.  His 
State,  however,  received  him  at  his  home-coming 
with  open  arms.  George  Rogers  Clark  projected 
the  conquest  of  Louisiana  in  behalf  of  France. 
France  was  to  gain  Louisiana  before  long,  indeed, 
and  the  United  States  was  to  gain  it  from  France. 
All  was  to  be  done,  however,  through  other  agency 
than  that  of  Clark.  But  for  that  story  we  are  not 
yet  quite  ready. 

William  Henry  Harrison,  aide  of  Wayne  at 
Fallen  Timbers,  son  of  a  Virginia  signer  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  himself  destined  to 
become  President  of  the  United  States  and  the 
grandfather  of  still  another  President,  was  the 
first  governor  of  Indiana,  —  so  the  great  expanse 


114  THE  ORDINANCE  OF  1787  [1796 

was  named,  the  Assenipia  and  Pelisipia  of  the 
days  of  the  Confederation  being  discarded.  It 
comprehended  the  vast  Northwest  which  Clark 
had  conquered,  running  up  to  the  sources  of  the 
Mississippi.  Unfortunately,  ways  of  disposing  of 
the  public  land  injured,  sometimes  permanently, 
considerable  areas.  Southeastern  Ohio  probably 
feels,  even  to  the  present  day,  an  ill  effect  from  the 
monopolies  which,  grasping  rapaciously,  forced 
many  good  immigrants  to  look  elsewhere  for  homes. 
Sometimes  there  was  rascality,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  cruel  swindle  at  Gallipolis ;  sometimes  simple 
ignorance  of  the  best  methods,  due  to  want  of  ex- 
perience in  managing  a  vast  domain,  was  a  cause 
of  trouble.  But  in  spite  of  all,  the  country  grew 
and  throve.  By  1794,  a  regular  line  of  packets 
had  been  established  between  Pittsburg  and  Cin- 
cinnati, some  of  which  carried  as  many  as  six 
cannon,  for  the  Indians  still  lurked  on  the 
shores. 

At  first  the  connection  of  the  Northwest  with 
the  South  was  much  closer  than  with  the  North- 
east. We  have  seen  how  at  first  Virginia  and 
North  Carolina  filled  up  Tennessee  and  Kentucky : 
thence  an  overflow  was  now  beginning  into  In- 
diana, and  across  the  river  into  Spanish  ter- 
ritory. Naturally,  indifference  to  slavery  pre- 
vailed, though  it  is  interesting  to  remember  that 
the  clause  in  the  Ordinance  of  1787  which  made 
the  Northwest  anti-slavery  came  from  Southern 


1799]  BACKWOODS  LIFE  115 

men.  In  1793  ftfl-npft  VM  Whitney's  invention  of 
the  cotton-gin,  that  contrivance  of  a  Yankee's 
brain  of  such  enormous  economic  value,  but  so 
calamitous  in  certain  other  ways  Now  first  negro 
slavery  became  distinctly  profitable ;  from  a  de- 
caying institution,  it  grew  to  be  the  corner-stone 
of  the  Southern  social  structure. 

From  the  reminiscences  of  old  backwoodsmen 
may  be  gained  vivid  pictures  of  pioneer  life  at  the 
time  when  the  eighteenth  century  ended.  The 
cabin  hearth  afforded  a  primitive  scene.  In  the 
morning  it  upheld  a  buckeye  backlog,  a  hickory 
fore-stick,  with  smaller  wood  between,  resting  on 
stones  or  rude  andirons,  while  a  johnny-cake  on  a 
clean  ash-board  was  set  before  the  fire  to  bake. 
The  frying-pan,  also,  with  its  long  handle,  was  sure 
to  be  too  conveniently  at  hand,  the  sputtering  of 
its  boiling  grease  heard  morning,  noon,  and  night. 
The  mother  cooked,  nursed  the  baby  between- 
times,  and  ruled  the  younger  children.  She  was 
an  adept  at  the  loom  and  the  spinning-wheel.  At 
meal  times  a  conch-shell  would  be  blown  for 
father  in  the  field,  the  old  dog  would  howl,  and 
presently  would  come  the  clatter  of  pewter  spoons 
and  basins,  or  possibly  of  the  wooden  trenchers. 
Always  on  convenient  pegs  within  easy  reach  lay 
the  rifle,  often  an  arm  that  had  been  carried  by 
the  side  of  Boon  or  Kenton,  and  that  had  deliv- 
ered death  to  many  a  savage.  As  times  grew 
more  peaceful,  it  was  still  indispensable,  for  the 


116  THE   ORDINANCE  OF  1787  [1800 

bear  and  the  wildcat  gave  up  their  haunts  only 
slowly. 

How  rude  the  people  had  become  while  facing, 
as  they  had  been  forced  to  do  for  so  many  years, 
their  hard  conditions,  is  perhaps  best  shown  by 
the  religious  extravagances  into  which  they  fell. 
In  the  earliest  day,  the  dominance  of  the  Scotch- 
Irish  had  brought  into  favor  Presbyterianism,  and 
sturdy  expounders  of  the  doctrines  of  the  Cove- 
nant had  tramped  with  their  flocks  through  the 
Cumberland  Gap  or  floated  down  the  Tennessee. 
But  a  wilder  form  of  faith  came  later  to  prevail. 
At  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  it  some- 
times happened  that  the  crops  would  be  left  and 
the  shops  abandoned,  whole  settlements  being 
forsaken  while  the  people  swarmed  to  some  camp- 
ground. There  a  temporary  town  would  be  laid 
out,  with  a  population  estimated  sometimes  as  high 
as  twenty  thousand.  The  preachers  became  fran- 
tic in  their  exhortations ;  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, falling  as  if  in  catalepsy,  were  laid  out  in 
rows.  Shouts,  incoherent  singing,  sometimes  bark- 
ing as  of  an  unreasoning  beast,  rent  the  air.  Con- 
vulsive leaps  and  dancing  were  common ;  so,  too, 
"  jerking,"  stakes  being  driven  into  the  ground  to 
jerk  by,  the  subjects  of  the  fit  grasping  them  as 
they  writhed  and  grimaced  in  their  contortions. 
The  world,  indeed,  seemed  demented.  It  was,  how- 
ever, an  aberration  that  gradually  passed  away. 
As  population  grew,  settled  schools  sprang  up,  the 


1800]  EDUCATION  117 

provision  of  the  enactment  of  1785,  setting  apart 
the  sixteenth  section  of  each  township  for  educa- 
tion, working  in  the  Northwest  especial  advan- 
tage. Where  education  prevailed,  the  frenzy  soon 
departed.  An  end  was  now  at  hand  for  the  day 
of  small  things.  For  the  settlers,  so  pinched 
and  baffled  and  peril-beset,  the  conditions  were 
about  to  soften  and  the  horizon  to  broaden. 


CHAPTER  VI 

LOUISIANA  PURCHASED   AND   EXPLORED 

IT  is  not  at  all  strange  that  separatist  feeling 
should  long  have  been  rife  in  the  Mississippi 
Valley.  Everywhere  in  the  country  in  those 
days  the  Union  was  less  sacred  than  it  afterwards 
became.  In  1798,  Jefferson,  then  Vice-President, 
wrote  the  Kentucky  Resolutions,  the  eighth. one 
of  which  favored  nullification,  fearing  that  the 
Federalists,  by  the  Alien  and  Sedition  Laws, 
would  set  up  arbitrary  power.  Madison  soon  fol- 
lowed these  with  the  Virginia  Resolutions,  which 
were  not  less  disuniqnist  in  temper;  and  the 
Federalists,  on  their  side,  before  the  new  century 
was  well  begun,  talked  secession  without  conceal- 
ment. Andrew  Jackson  and  Daniel  Webster,  the 
two  men  who  before  all  others  caused  the  Union 
to  be  regarded  as  an  indissoluble  compact,  were 
as  yet  on  the  threshold.  When  the  nineteenth 
century  opened,  however,  an  affair  was  in  train 
which  was  destined  to  promote  the  bond,  and  to 
increase  immensely  the  domain  and  the  power  of 
the  United  States. 

The  chronic  irritation  about  the  mouth  of  the 


1802]  NAPOLEON  119 

Mississippi  reached,  at  this  time,  an  acute  stage. 
The  Spaniards  held  New  Orleans,  now  elabo- 
rately fortified,  with  a  strong  garrison,  and  in 
spite  of  Pinckney's  treaty  were  slow  in  giving  up 
Natchez.  Immigration  was  pouring  across  the 
river  into  Spanish  territory,  a  fact  which  the 
Spaniards  viewed  with  alarm.  A  symptom  of 
their  uneasiness  was  a  closer  and  more  annoy- 
ing dealing  with  the  cargoes  which  the  Western 
States,  becoming  each  year  more  populous  and 
enterprising,  were  sending  down  to  the  outlet 
into  the  great  world.  Napoleon  had  now  come 
into  the  foreground,  and  the  consequences  were 
to  be  not  less  momentous  in  America  than  in 
Europe.  The  campaigns  of  Italy,  of  Egypt,  and 
of  Marengo  had  set  him  upon  a  pinnacle.  As 
First  Consul,  he  was  at  the  head  of  France,  which 
now  held  Spain  in  her  grip.  In  1801,  young  Lu- 
cien  Bonaparte,  brother  of  Napoleon,  negotiated 
the  treaty  of  San_JQdefonso  with  Spain,  a  .pro- 
vision of  which'  was  that  Spain  should  restore  to 
France,  in  return  for  Tuscany,  the  vast  undefined 
territory,  known  as  Louisiana,  ceded  by  France  to 
Spain  in  1762.  In  these  years  Napoleon  eagerly 
desired  to  restore  to  France  all  she  had  lost ;  and 
although  the  treaty  was  for  some  time  kept  secret, 
he  began  at  once  to  scheme  for  making  the  most 
of  what  he  had  gained.  In  1802,  the  peace  of 
Amje^isjeaving  his  hands  for  a  time  free,  he 
planned  at  once  a  great  expedition  for  Louisiana. 


120  LOUISIANA  PURCHASED  [1803 

A  general  of  division,  no  other  than  the  impetu- 
ous Victor,  was  to  command.  He  was  to  have 
under  him  three  brigadier-generals,  five  battal- 
ions of  infantry,  and  artillery  and  cavalry  in  pro- 
portion. To  be  sure,  there  was  for  the  moment 
peace  with  England ;  and  with  America  there  was 
a  traditionary  friendship,  which  President  Jef- 
ferson, the  particular  admirer  of  revolutionary 
France,  was  not  likely  to  disturb.  But  Victor's 
force  was  to  be  ready  in  case  of  a  change ;  and 
a  formidable  nucleus  it  would  have  been  for  an 
army  of  Creoles  and  Spaniards  bent  on  restoring 
New  France.  Neither  Victor  nor  his  army  ever 
sailed,  but  a  civil  official,  M.  Laussat,  was  dis- 
patched to  make  things  ready,  who  reached  New 
Orleans  early  in  1803. 

But  just  at  this  moment  France  received  a 
stroke  of  ill-luck.  In  San  Domingo,  the  negro 
chief,  Toussaint  1'Ouverture,  and  his  successors 
held  their  own  against  the  French  in  the  field. 
More  baleful  still,  yellow  fever  swept  off  the 
French  by  thousands,  LeClerc,  the  commander, 
Napoleon's  brother-in-law,  among  the  number. 
It  was  costing  quite  too  much  to  try  to  con- 
quer San  Domingo.  Was  an  expedition  to  New 
Orleans  likely  to  fare  any  better?  Moreover, 
though  for  the  moment  peace  might  prevail  in 
Europe,  Napoleon's  keen  eye  saw  war  in  the  near 
future.  Could  he  afford  to  embarrass  himself 
with  a  campaign  in  America  when  every  avail- 


1803]  LOUISIANA  SOLD  121 

able  man  and  dollar  were  needed  at  home  ? 
With  perfect  worldly  wisdom,  Napoleon  threw  up 
his  first  project  and  entered  upon  a  new  policy. 
This  action  resulted  momentously,  not  only  to 
the  United  States :  it  was  a  very  memorable 
crisis  in  the  career  of  Napoleon.  The  French 
Chambers,  the  nation  at  large,  his  own  family  (in 
Napoleon's  eyes  by  no  means  an  element  of  small 
account),  were  strongly  opposed  to  the  sudden 
alienation  of  the  vast  and  beautiful  province 
which  had  just  been  regained.  I&  determining  of 
his  own  will  to  sell  Louisiana  to  the  Americans, 
the  First  Consul  for  the  first  time  grasped  at  im- 
perialism. The  full  consummation  was  to  come 
a  few  months  later  in  the  assuming  of  the  sceptre 
and  the  purple ;  but  Napoleon's  first  declaration 
of  autocracy  was  in  connection  with  the  sale  of 
Louisiana  in  spite  of  all  opposition,  constitutional 
or  otherwise.  With  the  shrewdest  prudence,  a 
quality  which  he  possessed  no  less  than  impetu- 
osity, he  plainly  saw  he  could  not  expect  to  keep 
Louisiana  out  of  the  hands  of  the  English ;  he 
saw,  too,  that  by  transferring  it  to  the  Americans 
he  was  making  strong  a  power  which  was  destined 
to  rival  England ;  at  the  same  time  he  obtained 
for  his  treasury  a  sum  of  money  much  needed 
for  the  oncoming  wars  which  threatened  near  at 
hand.  So  it  was  that  Louisiana  was  sold.  It 
was  a  piece  of  French  statesmanship,  Napoleon 
doubling,  as  it  were,  with  his  first  imperial  nod,  the 


122  LOUISIANA  PURCHASED  [1803 

area  of  the  United  States.  Though  the  United 
States  profited  so  much,  her  agency  in  the  trans- 
action was  secondary. 

On  the  American  side  the  principal  figures 
in  the  great  transaction  are  of  course  Jefferson 
and  his  Secretary  of  State,  Madison.  Jefferson's 
party  was  strongest  in  the  South  and  West,  the 
regions  that  especially  felt  the  need  of  possessing 
the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi.  It  was  the  mouth 
only,  with  the  stronghold  of  New  Orleans  which 
guarded  it,  that  they  much  cared  to  secure.  That 
the  Spaniards  had  been  there  at  the  mouth  had 
been  a  source  of  friction  which  constantly  became 
more  exasperating,  a  trouble  that  must  be  got  rid 
of,  —  nothing  could  be  plainer  than  that.  But  as 
to  the  enormous  wilderness  lying  west  and  north, 
who  knew  or  cared  anything  about  that  ?  What 
likelihood  that  the  United  States,  already  in 
possession  of  millions  of  wild  acres  east  of  the 
Mississippi,  would  require  for  its  expansion 
those  illimitable  deserts  and  forests  !  Robert  R. 
Livingston,  minister  to  France,  intrusted  by  the 
administration  to  negotiate  for  the  possession  of 
New  Orleans,  for  many  months  found  nothing 
encouraging.  In  the  spring  of  1803,  however,  to 
his  astonishment  there  came  a  sudden  change  in 
the  tone  of  the  French  negotiators.  All  that  he 
had  asked  was  offered,  and  far  more  than  all. 
He  was  overwhelmed  at  the  demand  that  the 
Union  must  take  the  whole  of  Louisiana,  —  some- 


1803]  FEDERALISTS  OPPOSE  123 

thing  not  provided  for  in  his  instructions,  an 
accession  not  to  be  contemplated  without  shrink- 
ing. Nothing  was  to  be  done,  however.  In 
April,  James  Monroe  arrived  in  Paris  commis- 
sioned especially  to  push  the  bargain.  The  very 
night  of  his  coming  all  was  arranged.  As  the 
two  Americans  were  sitting  down  to  dinner,  Baxbe- 
Marbois,  the  French  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
was  seen  walking  in  the  garden  near.  He  had 
just  received  peremptory  instructions  from  Na- 
poleon, and  before  the  little  party  separated  it 
was  settled.  Iji  a  week  or  two  details  were  ar- 
ranged, the  price  to  be  $15,000,000.  The  Amer- 
ican envoys  had  exceeded  their  instructions  in 
consenting  to  take  the  whole  territory,  an  acqui- 
sition not  dreamed  of.  They  hoped  it  would  be 
overlooked.  What  could  be  done  when  it  was 
Napoleon  who  dictated ! 

The  treaty  of  cession  was  signed  in  May,  an 
act  which  Spain  highly  resented,  because  at  San 
Ildefonso  a  condition  had  been  that  Louisiana 
should  not  be  alienated  to  a  foreign  power.  Na- 
poleon was  quite  heedless  as  to  this  protest ;  and 
in  America,  too,  the  dominant  party  was  quite 
heedless  of  the  protests  of  the  Federalists,  who, 
foreseeing  a  diminution  of  the  importance  of  the 
Northeast,  fiercely  opposed  the  ratification,  not 
hesitating  to  threaten  secession.  In  this  stormy 
warfare  Josiah  Quincy,  of  Massachusetts,  was 
a  leader.  Perhaps  on  both  continents  no  one 


124  LOUISIANA  PURCHASED  [1803 

was  inore  surprised  than  the  civil  agent,  M.  Laus- 
sat,  who,  at  New  Orleans,  having  no  idea  of 
the  sale,  bad  made  energetic  preparations  for  an 
active  policy  as  soon  as  General  Victor  should 
arrive  with  his  soldiers.  Like  a  loyal  subject, 
however,  he  obeyed  orders,  turning  over  Louisiana 
to  the  United  States,  December  20,  1803,  in  a 
ceremony  pathetic  rather  than  joyous.  The  two 
representatives  of  the  Union  were  Wilkinson, 
commander-in-chief  of  the  army,  and  Claiborne, 
governor  of  the  adjoining  Mississippi  Territory, 
a  young  Marylander,  who  had  already  been  a 
member  of  Congress.  A  body  of  American  troops 
advanced  to  the  city  gates,  playing  the  airs  alter- 
nately of  France  and  the  United  States.  Here 
they  were  received  by  the  Spanish  garrison, 
which  had  not  yet  been  displaced,  and  escorted  to 
the  Cabildo,  the  administration  building  on  the 
Place  d'Arines,  in  the  centre  of  the  town.  Then, 
standing  on  a  balcony,  the  commissioners  ex- 
hibited their  credentials  to  Laussat,  documents  on 
both  sides  were  read  to  the  crowd  in  the  square, 
and  the  cession  of  Louisiana  in  return  for  the 
purchase-money  was  proclaimed.  The  keys  of 
the  city  were  then  delivered  to  Claiborne,  and 
the  people,  absolved  from  their  old  allegiance, 
received  welcome  and  the  promise  of  freedom 
under  the  new  order.  The  tricolor  of  France, 
which  had  floated  for  only  twenty  days,  was  then 
slowly  lowered,  while  the  crowd  looked  on  rue- 


1803]  OLD   NEW  ORLEANS  125 

fully.  Though  New  Orleans  had  been  in  Span- 
ish hands  for  forty  years,  the  people  were  mainly 
French,  and  had  rejoiced  on  Laussat's  arrival  at 
the  thought  of  returning  to  France.  As  the 
tricolor  descended,  the  stars  and  stripes  were 
slowly  raised.  Midway  of  the  staff  they  paused, 
becoming  entangled  and  waving  together.  Then 
while  the  Union  signal  rose  to  the  summit,  a 
French  officer  wrapped  the  French  emblem  about 
his  body  and  carried  it  to  the  barracks.  A  ban- 
quet ended  all,  given  by  Laussat  in  the  hall  of  the 
Cabildo. 

The  relative  importance  of  New  Orleans  was 
greater  at  the  time  of  the  cession  than  now :  to 
the  South  and  West  it  seemed,  as  it  was,  a  great 
acquisition.  The  flatboat  men  of  those  days  from 
the  Falls  of  the  Ohio,  or  indeed  from  Pittsburg, 
borne  on  the  yellow  torrent  flowing  between  its 
levees  well  above  the  country  to  the  right  and 
left,  beheld  at  last  on  the  eastern  side  the  high- 
sloping  ramparts.  The  gate  of  France,  which 
pierced  them  to  the  north,  was  a  mile  from  the 
gate  of  Tchoupitoulas  to  the  south;  the  Place 
d'Armes  was  equidistant  from  both  within  the 
city.  The  western  wall  was  a  third  of  a  mile 
from  the  river,  which  swept  in  a  majestic  crescent 
before  the  city's  front.  The  streets  within  were 
named  after  the  princes  and  nobles  of  France ; 
but  though  so  pompously  entitled,  they  were 
narrow  and  ill-drained,  breeding-places  of  pesti- 


126  LOUISIANA  PURCHASED  [1803 

lence.  The  defenses  were  formidable :  there  had 
been  soldiers  there,  notably  Galvez,  who,  after 
foiling  the  British  about  Pensacola,  had  become 
viceroy  of  Mexico.  The  commerce  had  been  made 
remarkable,  two  hundred  craft  sometimes  lying 
together  along  the  levee,  three  deep.  The  archi- 
tecture had  a  certain  tropical  quality,  —  steep,  red- 
tiled  Spanish  roofs ;  walls  broken  picturesquely 
with  balconies  and  verandas;  delicate  wrought 
ironwork  in  gateways  and  lattices.  The  cathedral 
and  the  Cabildo  were  among  the  finest  buildings 
on  the  continent.  Into  the  French  and  Spanish 
population  had  come  already  a  large  Ethiopian 
admixture.  While  there  was  certainly  a  Latin 
element  that  had  maintained  itself  pure,  there 
was  also  a  numerous  hybrid  class  ranging  from 
blackness  quite  Nubian,  through  various  mulatto 
grades,  to  quadroons  scarcely  distinguishable 
from  Creoles  of  purest  blood. 

They  were  very  different  from  the  rough  race 
into  companionship  with  which  they  had  now 
been  so  suddenly  thrust,  and  often  regretted  the 
change.  Claiborne,  made  governor  of  Orleans, 
as  the  city  with  its  environment  was  named, 
though  honest  and  able,  could  neither  speak  the 
tongue  nor  join  in  the  ways  of  those  he  was  set 
to  rule,  and  was  quite  without  tact.  Dislike  of 
Americans  long  persisted  among  their  descend- 
ants ;  and  soldiers  of  the  civil  war  recall  how 
often  in  the  city  and  in  marching  along  the 


1804]  UNKNOWN  LOUISIANA  127 

Teehe  or  La  Fourche,  they  encountered  before 
homes  and  plantations  the  flag  of  France.  For 
hope  was  high  then  in  many  a  breast  that  in  the 
upturning  some  chance  might  carry  them  back  to 
the  bosom  that  had  rejected  them.  And,  indeed, 
it  might  easily  have  come  to  pass  ! 

The  northern  part  of  the  purchase,  under  the 
name  of  Upper  Louisiana,  was  assigned  to  In- 
diana. What  lay  within  this  vast  unknown  it 
was  now  high  time  to  find  out.  The  spaces  east 
of  the  river  were  becoming  filled  with  a  popula- 
tion stable  and  ever  improving.  In_Jl802,  Ohio 
followed  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  into  statehood. 
Since  the  purchase  the  river  was  less  than  ever  a 
barrier  for  pioneers  thrusting  west.  Next  to  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  the  Louisiana  pur- 
chase is  Jefferson's  highest  title  to  distinction, 
though  it  has  been  quite  too  much  overlooked  that 
the  principal  figure  in  the  transaction  is  that  of 
Napoleon.  It  was  of  a  piece  with  Jefferson's 
good  statesmanship  at  that  crisis  that  he  now  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  having  the  new  possession  thor- 
oughly explored.  It  was,  indeed,  an  unknown 
region.  The  continent  had  been  crossed  by  the 
Spaniards  to  the  south,  two  hundred  years  before ; 
and  Mackenzie  and  Hearne,  in  British  service, 
agents  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  had  pene- 
trated regions  which  have  scarcely  been  visited 
since.  But  the  great  central  mass  of  the  continent 


128  LOUISIANA  PURCHASED  [1804 

from  the  river  westward  and  northward  was  as 
yet  untra versed.  By  a  fortunate  choice  two  young 
officers  were  selected  to  conduct  the  expedition, 
Captain  Meri wether  Lewis,  a  kinsman  of  Jeffer- 
son, and  at  one  time  his  private  secretary ;  and 
Lieutenant,  by  courtesy  Captain,  William  Clark, 
a  younger  brother  of  George  Rogers  Clark,  and 
perhaps  his  equal  in  courage  and  resource.  Both 
Lewis  and  Clark  had  seen  service  under  Wayne  ; 
they  knew  the  forests  and  their  people :  they 
proved  to  be  most  brave  and  capable  leaders. 

Lewis  and  Clark  set  out  from  St.  Louis  in 
May,  1804,  as  soon  after  the  winning  of  Louisi- 
ana by  the  Union  as  the  season  allowed.  In  the 
party,  comprising  twenty-seven  men,  were  a  half- 
breed,  who  was  expected  to  serve  as  an  interpre- 
ter and  hunter,  two  French  voyageurs,  a  negro 
servant  belonging  to  Clark,  nine  Kentucky  volun- 
teers, and  fourteen  regular  soldiers.  Before 
starting,  all  were  duly  enlisted  for  the  sake  of 
discipline.  Sixteen  more  men  joined  the  party 
temporarily,  intending  to  go  no  farther  than  the 
Mandan  villages,  on  the  upper  Missouri.  By 
way  of  equipment  three  large  boats  were  provided 
by  the  government,  well  stocked  with  arms,  am- 
munition, presents  for  the  Indians,  —  all,  in  fact, 
that  forethought  could  suggest.  For  food,  it  was 
believed  that  game  would  be  plenty,  and  that 
corn  might  be  bought  of  the  tribes. 

The  Mississippi  was  swelling  from  the  snows 


1804]        LEWIS   AND   CLARK  SET  OUT  129 

melting  in  the  mountains  far  away,  when  the 
three  well-laden  boats  pushed  off  from  the  levee, 
and  by  oar  and  sail  labored  upstream.  The 
torrent  of  the  Missouri  shouldered  aside  the 
smaller  flood  of  the  Mississippi,  thrusting  with 
its  waters  against  the  eastern  bank,  which  con- 
stantly crumbled  under  the  pressure ;  then  it 
flowed  southward  in  a  turbid  stream  distinctly 
marked  for  many  miles.  Turning  into  the  Mis- 
souri, the  adventurers  were  soon  at  St.  Charles ; 
then  passed  the  most  outlying  hamlets  and  clear- 
ings, in  one  of  which  old  Daniel  Boon  had  se- 
cluded himself,  the  remotest  of  the  settlers.  The 
detailed  record  of  Lewis  and  Clark  is  a  model 
of  what  such  a  record  should  be.  While  by  no 
means  men  of  scientific  attainments,  they  were 
respectably  schooled  according  to  the  standards 
of  the  time,  possessed  sharp  observation  and  good 
judgment,  and  let  no  important  thing  escape 
them.  They  refer  with  old-fashioned  quaintness 
to  the  girls  they  have  left  behind  them,  after 
whom  they  sometimes  name  localities.  Wisdom, 
Philosophy,  and  Philanthropy  rivers  show  plainly 
that  the  sojourn  of  Lewis  in  the  household  of 
Jefferson  had  left  a  mark  on  him.  But  the 
entire  account  commands  respect.  Cheerful  and 
alert,  they  lent  their  hands  now  at  the  oar,  now 
at  bearing  the  burden,  not  shrinking  from  the 
labors  and  risks  which  they  exacted  of  their 
men.  A  perfect  understanding  soon  came  about 


130  LOUISIANA  PURCHASED  [1804 

between  the  captains  and  the  rank  and  file. 
From  first  to  last,  each  man  in  the  party  seems 
to  have  done  his  best,  flinching  from  no  ex- 
posure, never  dreaming  of  mutiny. 

As  they  made  their  slow  way  up  the  Missouri, 
game  was  plentiful,  and  also  Indians.  The  latter 
never  daunted  them.  Among  the  Sioux  they 
were  unquestionably  in  peril;  but  a  mixture  of 
tact  and  boldness,  quite  of  a  piece  with  the  de- 
meanor of  George  Rogers  Clark  in  similar  cir- 
cumstances, always  brought  them  through.  They 
spread  far  and  wide  the  news  of  the  purchase 
of  Louisiana,  proclaimed  the  greatness  of  Uncle 
Sam,  and  distributed  presents.  With  humane 
zeal  somewhat  nai've  and  superfluous,  —  and  here 
again  perhaps  we  see  the  touch  of  Jefferson,  — 
they  labored  to  swear  the  tribes  to  peace  among 
themselves.  They  toiled  on  through  summer 
and  autumn,  and  as  the  cool  fall  weather  came, 
they  approached  the  Mandan  villages,  far  toward 
the  Hudson's  Bay  territory,  and  were  now  on  the 
track  followed  half  a  century  before  by  the 
brothers  La  Ve*rendrye,  young  men  of  a  spirit 
like  their  own.  Here  they  passed  the  winter 
near  the  present  site  of  Bismarck,  meeting  enter- 
prising St.  Louis  and  Hudson's  Bay  men,  with 
whom  they  got  on  amicably.  The  Mandans,  a 
superior  tribe,  well  advanced  in  the  higher  stage 
of  barbarism,  skillful  as  builders,  potters,  and 
weavers,  lacking  perhaps  only  the  ability  to  smelt 


1805]  THE  GREAT  PLAINS  131 

iron  and  the  use  of  an  alphabet  to  emerge  into 
the  lower  stage  of  civilization,  showed  them  great 
hospitality,  which  the  guests  paid  back  with  gifts 
and  friendship. 

With  the  spring  of  1805,  Lewis  and  Clark 
reorganized  their  force.  Some  returned  down 
the  Missouri,  carrying  the  record  made  up  to  this 
time.  A  few  new  people  were  taken  on,  of 
especial  value  being  the  squaw  Sacajawea,  the 
"  Bird  woman,"  wife  of  the  half-breed  Chabonneau, 
without  whose  help  the  expedition  in  the  later 
stages  might  have  ended  in  failure.  She  had  been 
captured  some  years  before  from  a  mountain 
tribe,  and  spoke  Shoshone,  a  dialect  prevailing  in 
the  remote  West.  The  Bird  woman  carried  at  her 
back  her  papoose,  only  a  few  weeks  old.  She 
was,  however,  equal  to  all  the  party  encountered ; 
and  as  interpreter  and  friendly  intercessor  in 
the  more  distant  deserts,  became  invaluable. 
Setting  out  in  good  time,  the  two  captains  pushed 
through  the  heart  of  the  continent,  which,  as  far 
as  human  beings  were  concerned,  seemed  to  them 
an  utter  solitude.  They  saw  no  trace  of  man 
until  they  reached  the  continental  divide.  The 
country,  however,  swarmed  with  game,  especially 
buffalo,  the  enormous  herds  of  which  hid  the 
plain  and  choked  the  shallow  streams  to  the 
hindrance  of  the  boats.  Deer  and  bears  also 
abounded.  First  of  white  men  they  beheld  and 
experienced  the  grizzly  bear,  whose  hide  would 


132  LOUISIANA  PURCHASED  [1805 

almost  turn  a  rifle-ball,  and  who  sometimes  held 
the  hunters  treed  until  rescued  at  great  risk. 

The  conditions  of  the  explorer's  life  were  never 
more  ideal  than  throughout  this  second  summer. 
Their  rifles  gave  them  supplies  bounteous  and 
varied ;  with  each  day's  progress  new  tracts  of 
this  unknown  world  opened  to  their  vision,  teem- 
ing with  life,  while  there  was  enough  of  adven- 
ture to  give  zest  to  the  journey.  The  approach 
of  the  second  winter  found  them  near  the  divide 
of  the  continent.  Here  they  encountered  the 
mountain  tribes,  and  in  winning  their  good-will, 
the  help  of  the  Bird  woman  was  worth  much. 
She  recovered  after  a  long  absence  her  own 
kindred,  who  recognized  and  received  her  joy- 
fully, and  were  full  of  kindness  toward  the 
strangers  who  had  brought  their  sister  back. 
The  student  of  Lewis  and  Clark  feels  that  this 
wild  mother  with  her  papoose  on  her  back,  so 
friendly  and  useful,  deserves  to  be  in  some  way 
commemorated.  The  young  captains  speculated, 
amused,  as  to  what  kind  of  a  representation  it 
was  which  finally  reached  the  tribes  whom  they 
met  in  council,  when  their  message,  filtered  from 
English  into  French,  and  from  that  into  this, 
that,  and  the  other  savage  dialect,  at  last  came 
out  into  the  tongue  of  those  remote  gorges  and 
peaks.  But  some  kind  of  a  message  was  con- 
veyed. With  medals  and  beads  in  their  hands, 
and  courage  and  frank  good  nature  in  their 


1806]         LEWIS  AND  CLARK  RETURN  133 

faces,  they  won  their  way.  Exchanging  their 
boats,  which  they  cached,  for  horses  bought  of 
their  new  friends,  they  were  led  by  guides,  who 
served  them  well,  through  a  pass  of  the  Bitter- 
Root  range  to  the  Pacific  slope.  Here  striking  a 
tributary  of  the  Snake  Eiver,  they  speedily  floated 
to  the  Columbia,  and  on  that  to  the  Western 
ocean. 

As  they  set  out  to  return  in  1806,  hardships 
multiplied.  The  game,  so  abundant  on  the  plains, 
was  now  scarce,  and  starvation  threatened.  They 
had  recourse  to  strange  food,  and  there  was  a 
dearth  of  that.  Before  spring  ended,  however, 
they  struggled  across  the  divide,  their  mountain 
friends  standing  fast  to  them.  Their  boats  and 
stores  were  found  unharmed.  Henceforth  their 
journey  homeward  was  speedy  and  easy.  The 
party  separated,  Clark  descending  by  the  Yellow- 
stone, while  Lewis  followed  the  Missouri. 

On  their  return  they  encountered  hostile  In- 
dians whom  it  was  necessary  to  meet  boldly  and 
promptly.  With  the  dangerous  Blackfeet  at  last 
nothing  but  war  was  possible.  When  it  became 
inevitable,  Lewis  paralyzed  the  savages  by  a  bold 
initiative.  Lewis  himself  shot  one  of  them,  the 
only  bloodshed  found  necessary  during  the  entire 
term  of  their  absence.  He  was,  however,  soon 
after  badly  wounded  himself  by  an  accidental  shot 
from  one  of  his  own  men,  recovering  only  with 
difficulty.  The  two  parties,  uniting,  floated  quietly 


134  LOUISIANA  PURCHASED  [1806 

down  to  St.  Louis,  justly  exultant  over  their  ac- 
complishment. The  end  was  reached  in  Septem- 
ber, 1806,  and  the  journal  forwarded  to  Jefferson. 
The  conduct  of  all  was  creditable  in  a  high  degree. 
In  the  party  but  one  man  died,  Sergeant  Floyd, 
whose  grave,  on  a  bluff  of  the  upper  Missouri,  has 
been  of  late  years  carefully  marked.  Of  the 
savages  encountered,  but  one  suffered  harm,  the 
Blackf oot  Indian  shot  by  Lewis.  Lewis  and  Clark 
were  the  first  of  the  American  pathfinders  west 
of  the  river,  the  precursors  of  a  resolute  company 
who  almost  to  the  present  have  been  sweeping 
mystery  from  the  face  of  the  Great  West.  They 
were  well  rewarded.  Lewis  soon  after  was  made 
governor  of  Upper  Louisiana,  but  died  mysteri- 
ously two  years  later  on  a  journey  through  Ten- 
nessee, whether  by  murder  or  suicide  has  never 
been  explained.  Clark  succeeded  him,  retaining 
the  position  after  the  change  of  name  from  Upper 
Louisiana  to  Missouri,  administering  his  charge 
for  many  years  from  St.  Louis. 

Not  less  worthy  than  Lewis  and  Clark  was 
their  comrade  in  the  army,  Lieutenant  Zebulon 
Montgomery  Pike ;  who,  however,  was  less  fortu- 
nate than  they  in  receiving  his  commission  to 
explore  from  the  worthless  Wilkinson,  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  army,  instead  of  from  the  President 
himself,  a  fact  that  brought  him  trouble.  Leaving 
St.  Louis  in  August,  1805,  with  twenty  regular 
soldiers,  he  pushed  upstream  like  his  predecessors 


1806]  PIKE  EXPLORES  135 

fifteen  months  before.  Instead  of  turning  into 
the  Missouri,  he  steered  for  the  great  bluffs  at 
Alton,  then  passed  the  mouth  of  the  Illinois  and 
still  onward.  His  men  respected  him  :  he  man- 
aged the  Indians  with  great  success :  he  was  a 
master  of  the  rifle,  that  prime  requisite  of  a  fron- 
tier leader.  Late  in  the  fall  he  reached  Minne- 
sota, where  he  spent  the  winter  exploring  far  and 
wide  with  dog-sleds,  in  one  expedition  reaching 
the  remote  Leech  Lake,  though  not  Lake  Itasca. 
At  the  Falls  of  St.  Anthony,  of  which  there  had 
been  little  mention  since  the  time  of  Carver,  thirty 
years  before,  he  held  a  great  council  with  the 
Sioux.  These  he  contrived  to  placate  ;  and  also 
the  British  traders,  even  while  he  hoisted  the 
American  flag  at  their  posts. 

By  the  end  of  April,  1806,  he  had  returned  to 
St.  Louis,  whence  in  July  Wilkinson  sent  him  out 
again,  nominally  to  explore  the  indefinite  boundary 
between  the  American  and  Spanish  possessions, 
though  Wilkinson,  at  whose  career  we  must  pre- 
sently look  more  carefully,  probably  had  in  view 
some  filibustering.  Pike's  party  this  time  con- 
sisted of  twenty-three  soldiers  and  fifty  Osage 
captives,  mostly  women  and  children,  whom  the 
government,  having  taken  from  the  Pottawato- 
mies,  wished  to  restore  to  their  tribe.  From  the 
Missouri,  Pike  ascended  the  Osage,  his  errand 
propitiating  the  Indians,  so  that  his  way  was  at 
first  made  very  smooth.  From  here  he  struck 


136  LOUISIANA   PURCHASED  [1807 

across  the  plains  of  the  Pawnee  country,  reaching 
at  last  the  Arkansas.  He  had  now  to  deal  with 
the  terrible  horse-Indians  of  the  Plains,  Black- 
feet  at  the  north,  Comanches  at  the  south,  peers 
of  the  Iroquois  in  the  east  in  ferocious  prowess. 
Pike  and  his  men  had  chance  enough  to  see  them 
both  on  the  hunt  and  war-path  ;  but  by  prudent 
conduct  they  escaped  all  harm.  They  ascended 
the  Arkansas  well  toward  its  head,  striking  across 
country  in  November  for  the  mountains,  until 
through  the  wintry  air  rose  before  them  the  sum- 
mit which  rightly  bears  the  name  Pike's  Peak. 

But  here  misfortune  began.  The  winter  set  in 
cold,  and  the  game  in  the  mountains,  as  Lewis 
and  Clark  had  just  before  found,  by  no  means 
equaled  the  abundance  of  the  plains.  Finding 
in  January  a  canon  containing  deer,  Pike  built  a 
fort,  left  behind  his  horses  with  a  guard,  and  with 
twelve  of  his  hardiest  men  struck  out  for  the  Rio 
Grande.  The  little  troop  was  soon  in  desperate 
straits  through  cold  and  famine.  Nine  of  the 
number  had  their  feet  frozen.  In  Wet  Mountain 
Valley,  in  mid-January,  1807,  the  party  had  been 
four  days  without  food,  but  a  buffalo  was  at  last 
killed.  Two  men  lost  their  feet  through  frost, 
and  had  to  be  temporarily  left  behind.  But 
neither  discipline  nor  resolution  failed.  A  second 
rush  for  the  Rio  Grande  was  successful.  They 
encountered  milder  weather :  game  grew  more 
plenty.  They  were  now  on  Spanish  territory,  but 


1807]  HIS  RETURN  137 

Pike  built  a  fort  and  hoisted  the  American  flag. 
This  was  no  doubt  Wilkinson's  instruction,  but 
the  encroachment  cost  him  dear.  Pike  and  his 
men  were  presently  after  captured  by  the  com- 
mandant at  Santa  Fe",  who  had  heard  of  the  in- 
trusion. He  courteously  overlooked  it,  however, 
as  a  probable  mistake,  sending  Pike  home  by  a 
circuitous  route  through  Chihuahua  and  Texas, 
during  which  journey  he  made  interesting  notes 
as  to  people  and  country.  On  reaching  home  he 
found  his  superior,  Wilkinson,  in  disgrace  for 
treasonable  conduct,  and  himself  compromised 
as  having  submitted  to  be  his  tool.  He  was  able, 
however,  to  vindicate  his  good  name,  rose  in  the 
service,  and  fell  at  last  as  a  brigadier-general,  in 
the  attack  on  York,  now  Toronto,  in  the  War  of 
1812,  —  from  first  to  last  a  brave  and  strenuous 
soldier. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    MISSISSIPPI   VALLEY    HELD   AGAINST    HOME 
CONSPIRATORS   AND   FOREIGN   ASSAILANTS 

NAPOLEON'S  proceeding  in  the  sale  of  Louisi- 
ana to  the  United  States  had  no  doubt  been  a 
piece  of  rough-riding.  He  went  against  the  feel- 
ings of  his  brothers  and  of  the  French  Cham- 
bers ;  the  population  of  the  alienated  province 
were  not  at  all  consulted;  the  promise  made 
to  Spain,  in  1800,  that  the  retroceded  province 
should  never  be  given  up  to  a  foreign  power,  was 
quite  disregarded.  After  the  purchase  complica- 
tions and  soreness  remained,  out  of  which,  before 
many  years,  came  embarrassment  and  danger  for 
America.  When,  in  1763,  France  had  surren- 
dered Louisiana  to  Spain,  the  boundary  of  Or- 
leans, the  southern  province,  ran  along  the  river 
Iberville  to  Lake  Maurepas  ;  thence,  following  the 
north  shore,  it  ran  to  Lake  Pontchartrain,  along 
the  north  shore  of  which  again  it  reached  the 
Gulf.  All  to  the  east  of  this  line  France  gave, 
in  1763,  to  England:  all  to  the  west  to  Spain. 
England,  now  taking  up  the  matter,  had  drawn  a 
line  from  the  junction  of  the  Yazoo  with  the  Mis- 


1805]  AARON  BURR  139 

sissippi  due  east  to  Appalachicola,  thence  south 
to  the  Gulf,  and  named  the  territory  included 
West  Florida.  In  1783,  England  made  the  31st 
parallel  the  northern  boundary  of  West  Florida, 
giving  both  Floridas,  East  and  West,  back  to 
Spain.  When,  in  1800,  Spain  retroceded  Louisi- 
ana to  France,  she  held  on  to  West  Florida  as 
not  having  been  given  her  by  France,  but  by 
England.  But  the  United  States,  perhaps  too 
cavalierly,  claimed  it  as  part  of  the  purchase,  the 
uncertainty  leading  to  years  of  bickering.  Spain 
held  Natchez  as  territory  she  had  never  resigned : 
while  the  United  States  showed  stormy  discon- 
tent, resulting  at  last  in  the  concoction  of  a 
scheme  at  the  time  very  noteworthy. 

Contemporary  with  the  great  explorations, 
cheering  at  the  time  in  their  revelation  of  a 
magnificent  domain,  —  so  cheering  a  page  in  our 
history  to  whoever  reviews  the  story,  because  the 
pathfinders  showed  such  efficiency  and  manly 
worth,  —  the  Mississippi  Valley  was  the  scene  of 
a  discreditable  episode,  the  main  part  in  which 
was  played  by  that  bete  noire  of  the  early  nine- 
teenth century  in  America,  Aaron  Burr.  This 
fascinating  but  unscrupulous  figure  was  the 
grandson  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  and  in  brilliant 
power  probably  the  equal  of  any  son  of  the 
famous  line  descended  from  the  great  preacher. 
Bold  and  selfish,  his  magnetism  was  extraordinary. 
He  subjected  to  his  will  both  men  and  women 


140       CONSPIRATORS  AND  ASSAILANTS     [1805 

until  they  became  completely  his  victims.  His 
dominance  became  so  marked  that  at  one  time 
he  stood  among  the  two  or  three  leading  men  of 
the  land.  He  sank  at  last  into  a  dishonored 
grave ;  and  the  visitor  who  stands  by  its  side  at 
Princeton,  New  Jersey,  with  the  ashes  of  his 
stern  Puritan  kindred  close  at  hand,  marvels  that 
one  so  nobly  fathered,  so  amply  dowered  with 
gifts  and  graces,  should  have  left  in  the  story  of 
America  only  a  name  of  infamy.  Burr  had  been 
Vice-President  of  the  United  States,  and  in 
1800,  when  the  election  was  thrown  into  the 
House,  Jefferson  won  the  Presidency  from  him 
by  only  one  vote.  Jefferson  naturally  disliked 
him,  but  he  was  a  great  Democratic  leader,  and 
as  such  he  fought  in  New  York,  tooth  and  nail, 
the  famous  Federalist,  Alexander  Hamilton.  The 
bitterness  became  so  marked  that  one  day  the 
two  men  stood  front  to  front,  at  Weehawken  on 
the  Hudson,  with  the  result  that  the  young  nation 
was  robbed  untimely  of  perhaps  the  most  valu- 
able life  which  it  then  contained. 

When  it  was  that  Aaron  Burr  began  plotting 
for  power  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  is  uncertain. 
Exactly  what  he  schemed  also  cannot  certainly 
be  told ;  for  he  presented  now  one  face,  now 
another,  as  he  crept  on  his  tortuous  way.  Prob- 
ably even  when  he  was  Vice-President  his 
thoughts  were  treasonable.  From  corrupt  politics 
in  New  York,  where  he  was  the  prototype  of  the 


1805]  BURR  GOES  WEST  141 

evil-minded  bosses  of  later  years,  he  passed  to 
corrupt  the  politics  of  the  nation.  He  is  believed 
to  have  schemed  to  invade  the  Spanish  territory 
in  Texas  and  Mexico  :  to  have  contemplated  also 
the  separation  of  the  West  from  the  East,  his 
ambitious  dream  being  perhaps  to  make  an  em- 
pire for  himself  out  of  the  general  wreck.  He 
planned  the  seizure  of  Washington  and  the  Presi- 
dent, the  mutiny  in  his  interest  of  the  navy,  and 
intrigued  for  the  support  of  an  English  fleet, 
which  was  to  attack  New  Orleans.  The  British 
Minister  at  Washington  was  captivated  by  the 
idea,  but  the  government  in  England  would  take 
110  part  in  it. 

It  was  in  April,  1805,  that  he  first  set  out  for 
the  West.  Committing  himself  to  the  Ohio,  his 
first  stop  was  at  an  island,  where  Blennerhassett, 
an  Irish  gentleman  of  some  property,  and  his 
wife  had  established  themselves  in  a  pleasant 
seclusion.  These  at  once  melted  under  his  arts, 
giving  themselves  and  all  they  had,  and  Burr 
passed  on  to  other  conquests.  No  man  so  dis- 
tinguished had  up  to  that  time  ever  visited  the 
West.  As  a  great  Democratic  leader  he  drew 
about  him  the  party  that  was  most  powerful  be- 
yond the  mountains.  The  fact  that  he  had  killed 
Alexander  Hamilton  did  not  discredit  him.  On 
the  frontier  the  duel  was  recognized,  and  Ham- 
ilton, moreover,  was  a  hated  Federalist.  As 
Aaron  Burr  hinted  obscurely  at  his  ideas  in  this 


142        CONSPIRATORS  AND  ASSAILANTS    [1805 

or  that  little  group  in  which  he  ventured  to  talk, 
it  shocked  no  one  that  he  decried  the  East.  The 
West  disliked  the  East,  and  had  some  good  cause 
for  doing  so.  Had  not  the  East  just  opposed 
with  all  its  power  the  Louisiana  purchase ;  and 
had  it  not  always  been  quite  too  ready  to  hamper 
Western  development  while  it  cherished  its  own 
narrow  circle  of  interests  ?  So  Burr  made  warm 
friends  in  Cincinnati ;  then  in  Kentucky,  into 
which  he  presently  crossed.  In  Tennessee  he 
won  a  formidable  ally  in  Andrew  Jackson,  major- 
general  of  the  Tennessee  militia,  already  noted 
as  Indian  fighter  and  head  of  the  anti-Spanish 
sentiment  that  was  fierce  in  those  regions.  The 
Spaniards,  greatly  dissatisfied  over  the  Louisiana 
purchase,  withdrew  only  slowly  and  sullenly  from 
their  old  holdings,  —  a  course  which  exasperated 
the  frontiersmen,  who  brooked  no  delay.  From 
Nashville  Burr  went  down  the  Cumberland  to  Fort 
Massac  on  the  Ohio,  just  above  the  present  site 
of  Cairo.  Here  Burr  met  no  less  a  personage 
than  James  Wilkinson,  commander-in-chief  of 
the  army,  whom  we  have  already  more  than 
once  encountered,  but  at  whose  discreditable  fig- 
ure we  must  now  look  more  closely.  As  a  young 
man,  good-looking,  plausible,  and  energetic,  he 
appears  first  in  history  as  the  messenger  sent  by 
Gates  to  convey  to  Congress  the  news  of  Bur- 
goyne's  defeat.  Lagging  somewhat,  his  news  ar- 
rived before  him,  whereupon  Sam  Adams  grimly 


1805]  JAMES  WILKINSON  143 

moved,  making  his  only  recorded  joke,  that  the 
young  officer's  service  be  acknowledged  by  the 
gift  of  a  pair  of  spurs.  In  after  years  his  fault 
was  not  that  of  slowness,  though  his  alacrity  was 
seldom  in  a  good  direction.  In  the  critical  period 
when  the  Union  was  weak,  he  sometimes  intrigued 
against  America  in  the  Spanish  interest,  receiv- 
ing Spanish  pay;  then  against  Spain,  which  he 
cajoled,  attaining  influence  by  putting  forth  bra- 
zen claims  and  stooping  to  underhand  trickery, 
till  his  career  became  mean  and  treacherous  to 
the  last  degree.  He  had  influence  and  address 
enough  to  become  chief  of  the  army,  and  as  such 
figured  in  the  ceremony  at  New  Orleans  when 
Louisiana  was  received  from  France.  He  was 
now  again  deep  in  treasonable  plottings.  As  the 
two  men  encountered  each  other  on  the  Ohio 
shore,  it  was  indeed  an  ill-omened  conjunction  of 
the  darkest  and  most  dangerous  spirits  which 
the  young  republic  contained. 

Wilkinson,  general  of  the  army,  and  yet  in 
Spanish  pay,  listened  eagerly  to  the  plots  of 
Burr.  With  the  most  involved  duplicity,  he  was 
prepared  off-hand  to  cast  over  both  Spain  and  the 
United  States,  if  Burr's  scheme  seemed  more 
likely  to  turn  out  to  his  selfish  advantage.  En- 
couraged by  a  contact  so  congenial,  Burr  pushed 
off  at  last  for  New  Orleans,  where  he  received 
much  sympathy  among  the  people,  who  liked 
neither  Spain  nor  America.  Claiborne,  however, 


144       CONSPIRATORS  AND  ASSAILANTS     [1806 

honest  and  loyal,  while  showing  him  respect  as 
a  man  of  distinction,  would  connive  at  no  trea- 
son. Returning  to  St.  Louis,  he  found  the  zeal 
of  Wilkinson  had  cooled.  The  latter  had  sounded 
his  officers  and  the  public  generally,  and  found 
they  rang  true.  They  could  not  be  misled,  and 
Wilkinson  saw  his  interest  in  another  quarter. 

Burr  now  made  his  way  back  to  Washington. 
To  a  conspirator  so  buoyant  and  audacious  the 
situation  seemed  full  of  hope  in  spite  of  the  occa- 
sional rebuffs.  If  he  could  only  get  means  !  Now 
it  was  that  with  a  refinement  of  hypocrisy  he 
tried  to  obtain  money  from  Spain,  the  power  he 
\  expected  to  ruin.  In  August,  1806,  he  was  again 
on  his  way  West.  His  beautiful  daughter  Theo- 
dosia,  Mrs.  Allston,  about  whose  history  and  sub- 
sequent fate  lies  so  tragic  a  shadow,  was  his  com- 
panion as  far  as  Blennerhassett's  Island.  The 
impulsive  Irish  pair,  completely  overcome,  sur- 
rendered their  entire  substance,  and  became  blind 
tools.  However,  they  were  the  only  persons  so  far 
overcome.  The  Irishman's  effort  among  his  Ohio 
neighbors  to  rouse  interest  was  an  utter  failure ; 
so  Burr  proceeded  onward  with  the  boats  and 
resources  provided  by  his  victim.  In  Kentucky 
United  States  Senator  John  J.  Adair  took  up  his 
cause  with  ardor :  but  Humphrey  Marshall  and 
Jo.  Daviess,  United  States  District  Attorney,  old 
Federalists,  and  staunch  and  loyal  men,  opposed 
him,  twice  causing  his  arrest  for  treason.  Burr's 


1807]  BURR'S  FAILURE  145 

counsel  at  this  time  was  young  Henry  Clay,  who, 
however,  exacted  from  Burr  an  oath  of  loyalty 
before  he  would  undertake  his  case.  In  Tennes- 
see, Jackson  was  more  alive  than  ever,  going  so 
far  as  to  call  out  the  militia  for  the  invasion  of 
Texas  and  Mexico.  He,  too,  thorough  patriot  that 
he  was,  exacted  from  Burr  a  strict  oath  of  loyalty 
to  the  United  States. 

But  Aaron  Burr  had  reached  his  limit.  Wil- 
kinson, making  up  his  mind  that  the  plot  was  too 
desperate,  resolved  to  turn  it  to  his  own  profit  by 
betraying  the  man  who  had  trusted  and  been  en- 
couraged by  him.  He  denounced  Burr  and  his 
schemes  to  Jefferson  in  a  tone  of  great  alarm. 
The  danger  had  never  been  and  was  not  then  seri- 
ous :  all  strong  and  important  men  who  for  a  time 
fell  under  Burr's  spell,  like  Clay  and  Jackson, 
stopped  short  at  definite  treason ;  but  it  was  Wil- 
kinson's wish  to  excite  alarm.  Burr  was  forced 
to  flee  with  a  few  followers  down  the  Mississippi 
in  Blennerhassett's  boats,  which  he  abandoned  at 
Natchez,  hurrying  himself  eastward  disguised  as 
a  boatman.  This  was  in  January,  1807.  Arrested 
at  last,  he  was  brought  to  Richmond  to  undergo 
trial,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  processes  in  the 
history  of  the  country.  John  Marshall,  greatest 
of  the  chief  justices,  presided :  the  speeches  of  the 
lawyers,  notably  of  William  Wirt,  have  been  since 
that  day  household  words  in  America.  Wilkinson 
turned  state's  evidence,  and  as  the  leading  witness 


146       CONSPIRATORS  AND  ASSAILANTS    [1811 

presented  a  contemptible  figure,  —  a  traitor  to  his 
friend,  as  he  was  ready  to  be  a  traitor  to  his 
country,  and  to  every  land  and  cause  which  had 
ever  put  faith  in  him.  Yet  by  the  strange  fatuity 
of  Jefferson  he  remained  at  the  head  of  the  army 
of  the  United  States,  his  career  culminating  in 
a  climax  of  inefficiency  and  ill-fortune,  on  the 
northern  frontier,  in  the  War  of  1812. 

Louisiana,  purchased,  explored,  and  now  for  the 
moment  quiet  after  the  fiasco  of  Aaron  Burr,  in- 
vited and  received  heavy  immigration,  the  river 
being  less  than  ever  a  barrier.  For  the  moment 
there  was  little  to  disturb  the  peace  of  the  Missis- 
sippi basin,  though  just  south  of  it,  in  the  region 
soon  to  become  Georgia  and  Alabama,  the  Creeks 
were  undergoing  an  experience  which  the  present 
writer  is  glad  to  be  relieved  from  narrating. 
Farther  north  the  savage  discontent  against  white 
encroachment  came  to  a  head  in  1811,  high  up  on 
the  Wabash,  in  the  same  forests  where  St.  Clair 
and  Wayne  had  fought  a  score  of  years  before. 
Tecumseh  and  his  brother,  the  Prophet,  added 
their  names  to  the  list  of  able  Indians  who  had 
confronted  the  inevitable  doom.  But  their  power 
was  broken  at  Tippecanoe,  and  a  frontier  general 
stepped  easily  from  the  field,  after  some  years  of 
waiting,  into  the  Presidency.  The  tongues  of 
men  were  becoming  familiar  with  names  among 
those  best  known  in  American  story.  Thomas 
Hart  Benton,  Tennessee-born  ,  but  early  carried 


1812]  ANDREW  JACKSON  147 

beyond  the  Mississippi,  began  now  a  career  of 
vigorous  and  independent  statesmanship,  one  of 
the  longest  and  on  the  whole  most  creditable  in 
our .  history.  Henry  Clay,  the  young  Virginian, 
who,  adopting  Kentucky,  had  forthwith  subdued 
his  State  by  his  masterful  qualities,  was  getting 
ready  to  make  a  larger  conquest  in  the  federal 
field. 

More  remarkable  than  any  other  character  was 
Andrew  Jackson,  —  in  his  strength  and  weak- 
ness, in  the  blending  in  him  of  dark  and  light, 
of  wisdom,  force,  and  folly,  —  a  bundle  of  sharp- 
est contrasts,  and  one  of  the  most  extraordinary 
figures  in  American  history.  A  Scotch-Irish- 
man of  the  toughest  and  most  unmitigated  kind, 
he  was  old  enough  to  have  borne  arms  against 
Tarleton  and  Ferguson  in  the  Revolution.  As  a 
young  man  he  had  been  the  companion  of  Sevier 
and  Robertson  in  the  Holston  and  Cumberland 
country.  As  Tennessee  came  forward  after  1796 
in  statehood,  he  soon  stood  in  the  foremost  place. 
He  was  thoroughly  a  child  and  a  type  of  the  fron- 
tier. He  was  a  stranger  to  fear,  chivalrous  to 
women,  —  a  very  dynamo  of  energy,  with  a  power 
of  command  which  fairly  prostrated  all  wills  about 
him.  He  was,  too,  honest  and  truthful ;  but 
ignorant  and  prejudiced  to  the  last  degree,  and  did 
not  shrink  on  occasion  from  any  bloodshed.  That 
cardinal  point  of  a  backwoodsman's  creed,  "  No 
good  Indian  but  a  dead  one,"  he  fully  professed. 


148       CONSPIRATORS  AND  ASSAILANTS     [1812 

For  a  Spaniard  he  had  no  hospitality  but  that  of 
the  bullet  and  the  bayonet.  Toward  Federalists 
his  thoughts  were  scarcely  kinder.  He  rose  till 
he  became  one  of  the  most  important  influences 
that  have  ever  affected  America,  an  influence  in 
which  it  is  hard  to  tell  whether  good  or  evil  has 
most  prevailed.  He  was  the  main  promoter  of 
the  spoils  system,  a  mischief-maker  in  finance,  a 
coarse  bully  with  a  chip  on  his  shoulder  toward 
foreign  nations  :  yet  he  initiated  the  policy  to 
which  is  due  the  preservation  of  the  Union,  and 
in  general  set  an  example  of  strenuous,  virile  pur- 
pose, which,  though  so  often  rough  in  striking  out, 
helped  much  toward  securing  a  sound  core  in  the 
great  unfixed,  inchoate  nation.  Of  Jackson's 
early  career  we  need  say  no  more.  With  the 
coming  on  of  the  War  of  1812  he  was  well  up  in 
the  eyes  of  men.  The  incident,  however,  which 
first  lifted  him  upon  a  national  pedestal  belongs 
especially  to  the  Mississippi  Valley,  and  must 
receive  our  attention. 

The  War  of  1812,  which  we  could  not  have 
avoided  in  the  conditions  then  prevailing,  had  had 
for  its  theatre  the  high  seas ;  the  Lakes,  where 
Perry  and  Macdonough  found  their  opportunity, 
with  the  border-land  adjacent ;  and  Washington, 
which  underwent  a  foray  from  an  English  fleet. 
Though  the  sons  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  had 
played  a  part  on  the  Northern  fields,  the  soil  of 
the  basin  was  not  touched  by  the  war  until  at  the 


1814]  PAKENHAM'S  FORCE  149 

very  end  :  then  happened  an  event  which  dwarfed 
by  its  importance  almost  everything  which  had 
gone  before,  the  battle  of  New  Orleans.  England 
has  rarely  sent  out  such  an  expedition  as  that 
which  sailed  in  1814  from  the  south  of  Ireland  to 
seize  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi.  Fifty  of  the 
best  ships  set  sail,  bearing  nearly  twenty  thousand 
fighting  men,  soldiers  and  sailors,  under  Sir 
Edward  Pakenham,  brother-in-law  of  Welling- 
ton. There  were  one  thousand  guns.  The  flag- 
ship of  the  admiral,  Sir  Alexander  Cochrane,  wUs 
the  Tonnant,  of  eighty  guns,  captured  from  the 
French  by  Nelson  at  the  Nile.  There  were  five 
seventy-fours,  one  commanded  by  Sir  Thomas 
Hardy,  Nelson's  bosom  friend.  Twenty  smaller 
ships  ranged  from  fifty  to  sixteen  guns  each,  and 
there  were  besides  sixteen  transports.  These 
contained  four  veteran  regiments  just  set  free 
from  the  Peninsular  war,  and  other  thousands  of 
troops  scarcely  less  formidable.  There  was  no 
thought  of  failure.  Civil  officials  had  been  pro- 
vided, that  when  the  easy  work  of  conquest  was 
over,  the  country  might  at  once  receive  a  British 
administration,  and  become  part  of  the  empire. 

If  Napoleon,  then  in  Elba,  could  follow  matters, 
he  must  have  felt  that  his  purpose  in  selling 
Louisiana,  to  keep  it  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
English,  had  come  to  naught.  During  the  war  no 
American  army  or  general  had  won  great  success : 
on  the  sea,  to  oppose  the  ruler  of  the  waves,  there 


150       CONSPIRATORS  AND  ASSAILANTS    [1814 

was  only  here  and  there  an  isolated  frigate. 
Only  success  could  be  expected  for  the  British. 
The  people  of  Louisiana  were  but  half-heartedly 
American.  From  the  valley  above,  what  force  of 
moment  could  be  rallied  among  the  tattered 
backwoodsmen  to  face  the  invasion  ?  A  short 
campaign,  and  Louisiana  might  be  won  as  Can- 
ada had  been  won ;  and  the  upstart  States,  cut 
off  north,  west,  and  south,  might  feel  at  last  the 
mistake  of  their  rebellion. 

At  the   beginning  of  winter  the  fleet  entered 

~"   i  ,_,_ in  i m HM>ia»iMi«iiMM  in  i  in I, 

the  Gulf,  reaching  the  anchorage  at  Ship  Island, 
December  10,  1814.  The  plan  was  well  laid. 
New  Orleans  was  to  be  attacked,  not  from  the 
river's  mouth,  but  on  the  flank  by  way  of  Lakes 
Borgne  and  Pontchartrain,  —  a  scheme  devised 
'by  able  captains  well  acquainted  with  the  coast. 
Within  the  city  all  had  been  apathetic.  The 
sprinkling  of  patriotic  Americans  among  the 
Creoles,  who  for  twelve  years  now,  without  will 
of  their  own  and  with  many  mortifications  and 
hardships,  had  lived  under  the  stars  and  stripes, 
could  do  little  to  diffuse  a  sentiment  of  loyalty. 
All  lay  on  Jackson,  and  he  met  the  emergency 
with  peculiar  and  extraordinary  power.  He  seems 
to  have  had  at  first  little  apprehension  of  danger. 
In  November,  marching  out  from  Mobile,  he  had 
stormed  the  British  post  at  Pensacola,  a  cam- 
paign of  a  week.  In  the  middle  of  November  he 
grew  listless,  fell  ill,  indeed ;  but  the  news  of  the 


1814]  NEW  ORLEANS  ATTACKED  151 

approach  of  the  great  armament  roused  all  his 
spirit.  He__did  not  reach  New  Orleans  until 
December  2,  at  which  time  nothing  had  been 
done  ;  but  the  rudest  energy  now  transformed  the 
face  of  things.  Martial  law  was  proclaimed: 
the  strangest,  most  incongruous  elements  were 
forced  and  combined  into  a  motley  army.  Near 
the  river's  mouth,  at  Barataria,  had  been  a  nest 
of  pirates  led  by  Jean  and  Pierre  Lafitte,  the 
latter  of  whom  had  been  in  the  French  navy. 
They  had  long  been  well  known  and  dreaded  as 
bold  and  lawless.  The  British  had  tried  to  win 
them  in  advance,  but  at  the  critical  moment  the 
unkempt  but  most  effective  miscreants  rallied  to 
Jackson's  side.  There  were,  besides  negroes  and 
Spaniards,  Creoles,  with  here  and  there  among 
them  an  old  soldier  of  Napoleon,  diffusing  hate 
of  the  British  and  a  flash  of  the  fire  of  the  great 
fields  across  the  ocean.  But  the  core  of  Jackson's 
army  was  a  body  of  Tennessee  and  Kentucky 
riflemen  under  Qoj|ge_j?,nd  CarrolL  fighters  really 
as  formidable  in  their  way  as  the  world  could 
show.  These  marched  down  from  Baton  Rouge, 
where  they  had  been  in  camp,  with  orders  from 
Jackson  not  to  sleep  till  they  had  reported. 

On  the  side  of  the  British  there  was  no  slack- 
ness. P§kenham,  who  had  broken  the  centre  of 
Marmont  at  Salajmanca,  and  been  schooled  in 
warfare  against  Soult,  Victor,  and  Massena  as 
well,  despised  the  rags  and  tags  that  were  flut- 


152       CONSPIRATORS  AND  ASSAILANTS    [1815 

tering  about  the  backwoods  leader ;  but  he 
neglected  nothing.  Lake  Borgne  was  swept  of 
American  gunboats ;  and  guided  by  Spanish  fisher- 
men a  heavy  force  was  landed  at  Isle_aux_Eoix, 
the  southeastern  corner  of  Louisiana.  This  soon 
made  its  way  by  lake  and  bayou  to  the  Mis- 
sissippi, striking  the  stream  only  six  miles  from 
the  city.  Here  they  destroyed  with  red-hot  shot 
American  river  craft  that  opposed  them,  and  by 
New  Year's  day  were  on  the  plain  of  Chalmette. 
Within  the  following  week,  reinforced  to  eight 
thousand  men,  with  the  city  close  at  hand,  their 
cause  seemed  secure. 

They  were  to  be  most  sternly  confronted. 
Jackson  had  few  cotton  bales  in  his  intrench- 
ment, —  but  rails,  earth,  and  whatever  else  the 
resourceful  American,  in  times  before  and  since 
then,  has  found  adequate  to  bullet-stopping. 
There  mustered  Creoles,  Spaniards,  negroes,  and 
pirates;  best  of  all,  there  mustered  the  back- 
woodsmen, knee-deep  in  swamp,  —  a  few  cannon 
now  and  then,  but  with  good  store  of  unerring 
rifles.  This  was  Jackson's  line.  It  was  a  con- 
spicuous case  of  what  one  finds  so  often  in  the 
gloomy  story  of  war,  —  untimely  depreciation  of 
the  enemy,  an  impatient  front  attack  instead  of 
a  cautious  flank  approach,  a  terrific  slaughter 
and  overthrow.  It  was  Bunker  Hill  over  again, 
except  that  the  American  ammunition  did  not 
give  out.  It  was  Cold  Harbor  and  Fredericks- 


1815]  JACKSON'S  VICTORY  153 

burg  and  Franklin.  It  was  many  a  bloody  field 
of  South  Africa.  The  Peninsular  veterans  came 
on  in  a  column  of  sixty  front,  and  withered 
to  the  earth  under  the  steady,  unquailing  marks- 
manship ;  for  it  was  the  Tennessee  and  Kentucky 
line  which  they  especially  faced.  They  tried  it 
a  second  time,  but  that  was  enough.  Pakenham 
and  two  generals  beside  were  amoflg  the  slain ; 
seven  colonels,  seventy-five  officers  of  lesser  rank, 
and  rank  and  file  by  the  thousand.  Till  the 
time  of  the  civil  war  no  other  such  slaughter 
took  place  on  American  soil.  The  English  bur- 
ied their  dead,  and  withdrew  sullen  and  silent. 
Peace  was  soon  after  announced :  indeed,  the 
battle  was  fought  after  peace  was  declared.  Jj; 
made  Andrew  Jackson,  for  good  and  for  ill,  the 


foremost  man  of  America. 


The  volume  of  immigration  into  the  Mississippi 
Valley,  slackening  if  times  were  good,  swelling 
if  times  were  bad,  —  the  movement  always  the 
product  of  discontent  with  existing  conditions, 
—  found  as  time  went  on  new  means  of  rolling 
forward.  In  the  seaboard  States,  along  every 
westward  road  went  long  trains  of  canvas-covered 
wagons,  drawn  by  oxen  or  horses,  the  dog  chained 
to  the  axle,  the  peripatetic  domestic  hearth,  as 
like  as  not,  smoking  up  through  a  funnel  pro- 
jecting through  the  white  arch,  the  husband 
guiding  the  team,  while  the  wife  and  younger 


154       CONSPIRATORS  AND  ASSAILANTS    [1815 

brood  looked  out  from  inside  as  they  slowly 
fared  forward.  But  not  all  had  the  "  prairie- 
schooner  ; "  many  a  tramper  continued  to  trudge 
under  his  pack  as  in  the  primitive  days ;  the 
pack-horse  was  not  entirely  displaced ;  wheel- 
barrows sometimes  appeared;  now  and  then 
there  was  a  hand-cart  with  wheels  made  of  planks 
fitted  and  sawn  into  circles,  after  which,  while  the 
father  pushed  the  load,  the  mother  and  children 
trooped  in  the  dust. 

When  the  westward  flowing  rivers  were  reached, 
an  important  change  from  the  earlier  methods 
was  seen.  As  early  as  1809,  Nicholas  J.  Roose- 
velt, impelled  by  Fulton's  success  on  the  Hudson, 
had  surveyed  the  waters  from  Pittsburg  to  New 
Orleans,  obtaining  depths,  studying  the  direct 
current  and  the  eddies,  examining  as  to  resources 
of  fuel.  Returning  East  with  a  favorable  report, 
he  was  commissioned  in  1810  to  build  a  steamer, 
and  presently  the  New  Orleans  made  her  way 
successfully  down  the  long  path  to  the  city  after 
which  she  was  named.  Others  followed  at  once. 
It  was  the  dawn  of  a  new  epoch,  the  reveille 
of  which  was  the  throbbing  beat  of  the  pad- 
dles through  the  forest  depths.  In  1815,  the 
JEtna  led  the  way  in  stemming  the  stream 
from  New  Orleans  to  Louisville.  The.  Enter- 
prise was  the  second  to  perform  the  feat :  after 
carrying  down  to  General  Jackson  a  cargo  of 
ammunition,  she  made  her  way  back  in  twenty- 


1817]  BROAD-HORN  AND   CABIN  155 

five  days.  All  doubt  was  now  dispelled.  Not 
only  the  great  river,  but  the  tributaries  became 
speedily  alive  with  the  constant  patrol,  and  set- 
tlement was  everywhere  quickened.  Not  that 
the  old  ways  were  speedily  superseded.  The 
broad-horns  and  the  simpler  rafts  long  persisted. 
On  these  the  trader  carried  down  his  cargo  of 
pork  or  flour  or  whiskey ;  to  these  the  settler 
often  committed  his  family,  his  stock,  and  his 
household  goods.  And  always  when  the  jour- 
ney's end  was  reached,  whether  it  were  trader  or 
settler,  the  bark  that  had  borne  the  burden, 
knocked  apart  at  the  shore  into  a  pile  of  timber, 
went  into  houses,  fences,  or  furniture,  as  the 
exigency  might  demand. 

When  the  newcomer  had  reached  his  point, 
a  claim  would  be  entered  at  the  nearest  land 
office  and  a  clearing  begun.  A  "half-faced 
camp,"  a  three-sided  shelter  of  saplings  and 
boughs,  with  a  deer-skin  hung  in  the  front  for 
the  fourth  side,  was  often  the  first  habitation : 
the  log-cabin  came  in  a  few  days'  time,  its  win- 
dows of  greased  paper  at  first,  its  loft  reached 
by  a  ladder,  its  chimney  of  sticks  cemented  by 
mud.  The  elaborate  home,  carefully  framed,  or 
built  of  stone  or  brick,  belonged  in  the  distant 
future.  This  was  the  time  of  the  corn-husk 
broom,  the  wooden  grindstone  with  grit  and 
gravel  driven  into  the  circumference,  the  latch- 
string  always  out,  the  clothes  of  leather  or  of 
homespun  dyed  butternut  at  the  fireside. 


156       CONSPIRATORS  AND  ASSAILANTS    [1817 

As  far  as  the  territory  affected  by  the  Ordi- 
nance of  1787  was  concerned,  the  fine  provision 
for  schools,  the  reservation  of  the  sixteenth  section 
of  each  township,  was  nobly  useful ;  but  in  practice 
the  good  sought  sometimes  fell  short.  The  six- 
teenth section  was  sometimes  swamp,  sometimes 
under  water.  At  first  there  was  much  indifference 
to  schools  throughout  the  whole  wide  area  of  the 
valley,  except  where  New  Englanders  were  be- 
ginning to  make  themselves  felt.  There  was  a 
disposition  also  to  build  from  the  top.  Weak  uni- 
versities and  academies  abounded  while  common 
schools  were  few,  the  funds  meant  for  them  hav- 
ing been  misappropriated  or  deliberately  stolen. 
Ohio  had  no  good  common-school  law  until  1826. 
Indiana  followed  no  better  course.  It  was  sought 
to  foster  the  higher  culture,  but  the  children  suf- 
fered. While  in  education  in  this  forming  world 
things  assumed  a  good  shape  somewhat  slowly, 
as  regards  religion,  calmness  and  reason  did  not 
appear  at  first.  The  excesses  of  the  camp-meet- 
ings gradually  abated;  but  religion  over  large 
areas  was  supervised  by  circuit  -  riders,  —  men 
often  heroically  devoted,  but  often,  also,  holding 
a  supposed  "  call  from  God  "  as  quite  superseding 
the  necessity  of  education  and  every  other  quali- 
fication, and  employing  methods  the  reverse  of 
sober  and  proper. 

In  finance^  "  wildcat  banking  "  worked  no  end 
of  mischief,  trouble  due  less  to  scoundrelisrn 


1817]  LAWLESSNESS  157 

than  to  ignorance  and  inexperience.  As  regards 
the  administration  of  the  law,  even  when  Judge 
Lynch  with  his  hurried  and  indiscriminate  pro- 
cedure did  not  intervene,  the  ways  were  nai've 
and  simple  to  the  last  degree.  McMaster 1  gives 
a  story  which  we  may  be  sure  is  no  caricature. 
"  Mr.  Green,"  said  the  judge  to  a  criminal,  "  the 
jury  says  you  are  guilty  of  murder,  and  the  law 
says  you  are  to  be  hung.  Now,  I  want  you  and 
all  your  friends  down  to  Injun  Creek  to  know 
that  it  ain't  me,  but  the  jury  that  finds  you 
guilty.  Mr.  Green,  you  can  have  time  for  pre- 
paration, and  the  court  wants  to  know  what  time 
you  would  like  to  be  hung."  Four  weeks  there- 
after was  fixed  upon  as  "agreeable"  to  the 
prisoner.  Throughout  the  Southwest  in  these 
days,  —  indeed,  throughout  Ohio,  Indiana,  Illi- 
nois, and  in  Louisiana  west  of  the  river,  so  far 
as  settlers  had  come,  —  legal  institutions  were  of 
the  simplest  and  rudest,  a  rough  justice  being 
enforced  here  and  there  by  vigilance  committees. 
His  own  good  rifle  and  his  unerring  eye  were 
often  the  isolated  settler's  only  sure  guarantee. 
The  roughness  and  brutality  in  the  river  towns 
now  coming  into  being  —  in  the  clusters  of 
population  in  general  about  mill-privileges,  salt 
springs,  mining-camps,  or  tracts  of  special  fer- 
tility —  could  be  only  feebly  coped  with  by  the 

1  History  of  the  People  of  the  United  States  from  the  Revolution 
to  the  Civil  War. 


158       CONSPIRATORS  AND  ASSAILANTS    [1819 

forces  in  the  new  society  making  for  order  and 
refinement.  As  yet  such  forces  are  in  too  many 
places  inadequate :  this  inadequacy  even  at  the 
present  day  we  find  quite  too  often. 

In  1804,  Congress  had  made  the  33d  parallel 
of  latitude  the  line  between  Orleans  and  Upper 
Louisiana,  the  names  first  given  to  the  tracts  ac- 
quired by  the  great  purchase.  Upper  Louisiana 
had  at  first  formed  part  of  Indiana,  but  as  early 
as  1805,  it  became  a  territory  by  itself  under  the 
name  Louisiana.  Seven  years  later  had  come 
another  change.  The  present  State  of  Louisiana 
was  admitted  to  the  Union  in  1812,  whereupon 
all  north  of  it  became  the  Territory  of  Missouri,  in 
which  as  early  as  1810  there  was  a  population  of 
twenty  thousand  whites  and  many  slaves.  In 
1816  Indiana  became  a  State,  in  1817  Mississippi, 
in  1818  Illinois.  Arkansas,  in  1819,  was  taken 
off  from  Missouri,  and  constituted  a  Territory. 
Up  to  these  years  immigration  from  the  Northeast 
had  been  little  felt  beyond  Ohio.  Indiana  and 
Illinois  had  been  filling  up  from  the  South,  a 
current  pouring  from  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  and 
even  as  far  back  as  North  Carolina. 

And  now  as  the  first  score  of  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  are  ending,  we  encounter  a  crisis 
in  the  highest  degree  fateful  for  the  Valley  of 
the  Mississippi,  for  the  United  States,  for  the 
world  in  general.  Kecalling  the  establishment  of 
the  Ordinance  of  1787,  it  will  be  remembered 


1819]  THE  COTTON-GIN  159 

that  that  instrument  throughout,  including  the 
momentous  prohibition  of  slavery,  was  especially 
the  work  of  the  Southern  men.  Anti-slavery 
sentiment  at  the  time  of  the  adoption  of  the  Con- 
stitution was  no  more  marked  in  the  North  than 
in  the  South.  But  Whitney's  invention  of  the 
cotton-gin  had  been  exercising  its  influence 
through  a  quarter  of  a  century,  and  a  most  im- 
portant change  had  taken  place.  That  small 
engine  has  shaped  our  ends  almost  as  if  it  were  a 
divinity,  instead  of  a  mere  construction  of  matter. 
The  population  coming  up  from  the  South  into 
Indiana  and  Illinois  brought  with  them  many 
slaves,  who  had  now  become  numerous  in  the 
South.  Since  the  anti-slavery  provision  of  the 
Ordinance  of  1787  shut  them  out,  they  preferred 
to  pass  on  and  cross  the  river  into  Missouri,  where 
there  was  no  hampering  provision.  Large  num- 
bers followed  this  course,  while  their  brethren 
who  remained  in  Indiana  and  Illinois  chafed  under 
a  restriction  which  had  come  to  seem  hateful. 
Just  at  this  time  the  tide  from  New  England  and 
New  York  began  to  flow  through  Ohio  and  up  the 
Lakes  in  heavy  numbers  into  northern  Indiana 
and  Illinois.  As  the  South  had  become  in  a 
marked  way  pro-slavery,  lo,  it  appeared  that  these 
Northern  men,  in  a  way  just  as  marked,  had 
become  anti-slavery.  A  fierce  struggle  arose 
in  these  States  between  the  North  and  South. 
Should  the  anti-slavery  provision  of  the  Ordi- 


160       CONSPIRATORS  AND   ASSAILANTS    [1819 

nance  be  disregarded  and  repealed ;  or  should  it 
stand  ?  It  was  the  first  grapple  of  the  combatants 
in  a  contest  destined  to  be  bitter  and  bloody  to 
the  last  degree. 

As  we  come  under  the  black  shadow  which  in 
past  years  has  so  clouded  American  skies,  and 
which  continues  so  to  cloud  them,  it  is  proper  to 
look  at  the  thing  from  the  beginning. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  BLACK  SHADOW 

THROUGHOUT  history,  no  fact  is  more  plain 
than  the  persistency  of  human  bondage  down  to 
a  period  close  at  hand.  In  antiquity  all  races 
may  be  said  to  have  been  thus  subjected  to  a 
greater  or  less  extent.  War  had  been  universal 
and  constant  in  the  savage  state  from  which 
man  slowly  rose.  The  captive  at  first  killed  was 
at  last  preserved,  becoming  thus  the  servus ; 
and  the  preserved  men,  the  servi,  were  forced  to 
work.  It  is  believed  by  many  philosophic  students 
that  this  labor  to  which  the  servile  class  was 
forced  has  played  a  beneficent  part  in  the  evo- 
lution of  humanity,  becoming  the  harsh  school  in 
which  man  learned  to  use  his  hands  otherwise 
than  in  wielding  weapons.  In  the  modern  era 
human  bondage  has  relaxed  slowly.  Multitudes 
in  Europe  until  a  recent  time  were  more  or  less 
distinctly  in  fetters.  In  the  colonial  period  of 
America,  with  the  "  indentured  servants  "  and 
the  "  redemptioners,"  white  men  who  were  prac- 
tically enslaved  abounded.1  This  being  the  con- 

1  For  a  scholarly  study  of  this  topic,  see  Diffenderffer,  German 


162  THE  BLACK  SHADOW  [1800 

dition  of  the  world,  it  is  not  strange  that  no  man's 
conscience  was  troubled  at  the  idea  of  holding 
in  servitude  barbarous  races,  —  Indians,  negroes, 
peoples  of  the  East,  with  whom  at  the  era  of  dis- 
covery civilization  was  thrown  into  contact.  At 
the  time  of  the  American  Revolution,  few  con- 
sciences North  or  South  were  troubled  with  com- 
punctions as  to  slave-holding.  In  Boston  and 
Newport  the  ships  built  so  numerously  were 
largely  used  without  disguise  in  slave-trading : 
no  man  lost  repute  through  holding  slaves.  The 
newspapers  teem  with  advertisements  of  slaves  to 
sell,  and  offers  of  reward  for  the  recovery  of  fugi- 
tives. It  is  said  to  be  a  tradition  in  an  honora- 
ble Massachusetts  family  that  an  ancestor,  a 
respected  minister,  needing  a  servant,  sent  a 
hogshead  of  rum  to  the  West  Coast  and  had  it 
exchanged  there  for  a  kidnapped  negro,  whom 
he  made  his  chattel,  while  neither  his  parishion- 
ers nor  the  community  at  large  thought  the  pro- 
ceeding objectionable,  or  even  eccentric. 

At  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  slavery 
seemed  to  be  dying  in  America,  less  because  the 
consciences  of  men  were  roused  as  to  its  enormity, 
than  because  it  was  economically  unprofitable. 
Extinction  in  fact  came  at  the  North,  and  the 
South  was  in  such  mood  that  her  representatives 
in  the  First  Congress,  as  we  have  seen,  brought  to 

Immigration  into  Pennsylvania,  Part  II.,  p.  143,  etc.,  1900.  The 
sufferings  of  English,  Scotch,  and  Irish  are  also  detailed. 


1819]  SLAVERY  163 

pass  the  anti-slavery  clause  in  the  Ordinance  of 
1787.  Where  slaves  were  retained,  it  was  often 
less  from  motives  of  profit  than  motives  of  hu- 
manity, Washington,  Jefferson,  and  many  other 
leaders  looking  to  gradual  emancipation  as  a 
thing  certain  and  desirable.  But  all  at  once,  in 
1793,  the  cotton-gin  made  economically  profitable 
in  a  high  degree  the  labor  of  slaves  in  raising 
cotton.  As  the  North  was  not  affected,  events 
followed  the  course  upon  which  they  had  entered 
and  slavery  became  extinct ;  at  the  South  it  be- 
came the  corner-stone  of  the  social  structure. 

In  the  clash  in  Indiana  and  Illinois,  just  ad- 
mitted to  statehood,  we  have  the  first  premonition 
of  an  oncoming  tempest,  one  of  the  most  tre- 
mendous that  has  ever  descended  upon  humanity. 
W^e  have  glanced  at  the  story  of  the  negro  race  in 
America  from  the  beginning.  Its  pioneer  was 
Estevanico,  little  Steve,  who  crossed  the  continent 
in  Cortez's  time,  and  was  the  forerunner  of  Coro- 
nado  in  deserts  which  to  this  day  remain  pathless. 
They  came  with  the  Spaniards ;  they  came  with 
the  French  ;  with  the  Dutch  and  English.  They 
came  through  no  will  of  their  own,  but  forced  by 
sordid  captors  who  had  no  thought  but  for  their 
own  selfish  advantage.  Did  they  gain  or  lose  in 
the  transfer  ?  The  sin  was  not  theirs ;  in  God's 
justice  the  punishment  did  not  fall  upon  them. 
They  have  multiplied  by  many  millions ;  they 
have  been  subjected  to  a  harsh  discipline,  which, 


164  THE  BLACK  SHADOW  [1819 

however,  is  the  school  through  which  many  an- 
other race  has  risen  into  civilization,  and  which 
has  made  of  negroes  something  better  than  sav- 
ages ;  they  have  heard,  often  only  in  some  feeble 
and  far-off  way,  to  be  sure,  of  the  better  reli- 
gion.1 The  punishment  should  fall  upon  those 
who  have  sinned ;  and  it  has  so  fallen.  What 
has  been  the  punishment?  a  nation  divided 
against  itself  with  the  fiercest  hatred ;  a  war  in 
which  millions  of  our  noblest  were  sacrificed ; 
problems  at  the  present  moment  which  defy 
settlement,  and  yet  which  press  for  settlement, 
each  hour  making  the  pressure  more  urgent. 
The  black  shadow  wraps  the  continent  as  it  has 
done  for  eighty  years,  and  the  darkness  is  felt  in 
the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi. 

Missouri,  in  1819,  comprehending  the  whole  of 
the  vast  Louisiana  purchase  north  of  Arkansas, 
had  a  population  of  56,000  whites  and  10,000 
slaves,  and  desired  to  be  admitted  to  the  Union. 
It  was  becoming  an  unwritten  law  that  the  States 
should  come  in  in  pairs,  one  free  and  one  slave. 
It  was  only  by  chance,  perhaps,  that  Vermont  and 
Kentucky  had  thus  come  in  together ;  also  Ten- 

1  "  We  must  acknowledge  that  notwithstanding-  the  cruelty  and 
moral  wrong1  of  slavery,  the  10,000,000  negroes  inhabiting  this 
country,  who  themselves  or  whose  ancestors  went  through  the 
school  of  American  slavery,  are  in  a  stronger  and  more  hopeful 
condition  materially,  intellectually,  morally,  and  religiously  than 
is  true  of  an  equal  number  of  black  people  in  any  other  portion 
of  the  globe."  B.  T.  Washington,  Up  from  Slavery,  p.  16. 


1820]     .        MISSOURI  COMPROMISE  165 

nessee  and  Ohio.  But  it  meant  much  more  when, 
as  the  rift  was  appearing,  Indiana  was  soon 
made  to  follow  Louisiana,  and  Mississippi  was 
bracketed  with  Illinois.  Missouri,  now  knocking 
for  admission,  her  destined  mate  seemed  to  be 
Maine,  which  was  equally  anxious.  At  this  time 
Tallmadge,  a  representative  from  New  York, 
proposed  that  when  Missouri  was  admitted  (whose 
limits  as  a  State  were  to  be  much  restricted  from 
its  territorial  area),  any  further  introduction  of 
slavery  into  the  Union  should  be  prohibited  ;  and 
that  all  slave  children  born  in  Missouri  after 
its  admission  as  a  State  should  receive  freedom 
at  the  age  of  twenty-five.  Tallmadge's  sugges- 
tion, which  a  quarter  of  a  century  before  would 
hardly  have  been  opposed,  now  roused  a  fierce 
debate,  in  which  Henry  Clay,  Speaker  of  the 
House,  was  prominent  in  opposition,  who  argued 
that  it  was  unconstitutional ;  and  also  that  such 
a  determination  would  be  cruel  to  the  blacks 
themselves.  Other  speakers  claimed  that  the 
conditions  of  the  cession  at  the  time  of  the  Lou- 
isiana purchase  were  violated.  Tallmadge's  plan, 
however,  went  through  the  House  by  the  close 
vote  of  87  to  76 ;  but  in  the  Senate  there  was  a 
small  majority  the  other  way.  Congress  adjourned 
leaving  the  matter  thus  hung  up,  whereupon  the 
country  took  it  up,  North  and  South.  Daniel 
Webster  came  out  as  a  determined  opponent  of 
slavery.  In  January,  1820,  the  Senate  resumed 


166  THE  BLACK  SHADOW  [1821 

the  discussion,  Kufus  King  of  New  York  and 
Pinckney  of  South  Carolina  leading  the  two  sides. 
At  last  Thomas  of  Illinois,  restating  the  sug- 
gestion of  Tallmadge,  moved  that  slavery  should 
be  abolished  north  of  the  line  36°  30',  the  south- 
ern line  of  Missouri,  except  in  Missouri.  This 
was  carried  in  the  Senate  ;  and  also  in  the  House, 
where  thirty-seven  Southerners  opposed.  Mis- 
souri was  admitted  August  10,  1821,  Maine  com- 
ing in  as  her  mate.  The  arrangement  preceding 
the  admission  is  famous  in  history  as  the  Mis- 
souri Compromise. 

Missouri  thus  came  in  as  a  slave  State,  and  it 
was  sure  that  Arkansas,  to  the  south,  in  due  time 
would  come  in  in  the  same  way.  She  did  so  in 
1836.  The  settlement  of  the  area  north  of  Mis- 
souri was  in  1821  held  to  be  a  matter  very  re- 
mote. The  North  regarded  the  Missouri  Com- 
promise as  an  act  in  the  Southern  interest,  and  a 
surrender.  A  large  majority  of  Congress,  repre- 
sentatives from  the  South  as  well  as  from  the 

* 

North,  went  on  record  as  holding  the  doctrine 
that  Congress  had  power  to  prohibit  slavery  in 
the  Territories.  The  Cabinet  of  Monroe,  then 
President,  John  Quincy  Adams,  Crawford  of 
Georgia,  Calhoun,  McLean  of  Ohio,  Thompson  of 
Virginia,  and  Wirt  of  Maryland,  were  unani- 
mously of  that  view.  What  conflict  was  to  come 
in  the  future  over  the  point  we  shall  before  long 
see  ;  but  for  the  time  being  the  air  was  still.  The 


1830]        COMMUNISTS  AND   MORMONS  167 

Missouri  Compromise  was  felt  to  have  saved  the 
Union.  While  Henry  Clay  cannot  be  regarded 
as  its  originator,  his  figure  towered  in  the  debates 
of  the  time ;  and  he  more  than  any  other  was  the 
great  leader  of  the  hour.  He  was  hailed  as  the 
"  pacificator."  His  eloquently  proclaimed  theory, 
that  to  spread  slavery  was  humanity  to  the  slave, 
was  shared  by  Madison  and  the  aged  Jeffer- 
son, the  latter  of  whom  declared  that  spreading 
the  slaves  "  over  a  large  surface  will  dilute  the 
evil  everywhere  and  facilitate  the  means  of  finally 
getting  rid  of  it." 

For  a  generation  now,  the  thirty-three  years 
from  1821  to  1854,  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi 
was  a  happy  land,  or  at  any  rate  had  little  his- 
tory. The  monotonous  inflow  of  population  never 
intermitted.  New  England  and  the  Middle 
States  overcame  the  South  in  these  years  in  the 
outpouring  of  men.  With  the  prosaic  crowd 
came  now  and  then  picturesque  elements.  Social 
reformers,  of  whom  Robert  Dale  Owen  in  his 
model  colony  at  New  Harmony,  Indiana,  is  a  good 
type,  established  here  and  there  communities, 
whence  the  ills  of  life  were  to  be  banished.  Re- 
ligious fanatics  came,  above  all  the  Mormons : 
these,  aglow  like  the  tribes  of  Israel,  through  the 
exhortations  of  their  prophets,  paused  for  a  brief 
sojourn  at  Nauvoo,  in  Illinois ;  but  the  Gentiles 
proving  inhospitable,  they  passed  on  presently  to 
establish  their  shrines  in  remoter  wildernesses. 


168  THE  BLACK  SHADOW  [1854 

The  places  of  those  who  struck  out  westward 
were  promptly  filled,  as  time  went  on,  by  a  for- 
eign tide,  Irish  and  German  particularly.  The 
latter  often  made  little  pause  on  the  coast,  but  came 
almost  at  once  into  the  heart  of  the  country,  pass- 
ing up  the  Lakes,  and  down  the  Ohio ;  passing 
up  also  from  New  Orleans,  until  Wisconsin, 
Iowa,  and  Missouri,  as  well  as  the  older  North- 
west, became  dotted  with  German  villages.  Mean- 
time Doniphan,  Emory,  Stevens,  Fremont,  and 
other  pathfinders,  working  out  from  the  old  tracks 
of  Lewis  and  Clark  and  Pike,  brought  to  light 
vast  new  habitable  areas  in  what  had  once  been 
believed  to  be  a  "great  American  desert." 
Slowly  the  everlasting  warfare  with  the  savage 
abated.  Black  Hawk  and  his  bands  succumbed  : 
Sioux,  Blackfeet,  and  Comanches  slowly  ceased  to 
be  terrible.  In  the  States  already  constituted,  the 
prairies  were  ploughed  and  the  forests  felled. 
Stockaded  hamlets  grew  into  cities,  the  wilderness 
blossomed,  harsh  conditions  became  mitigated. 
In  1846,  the  wrenching  of  Texas  from  the  weak 
hands  of  Mexico  affected  strongly  the  future  of 
the  basin,  as  it  did  that  of  all  America. 

But  upon  the  quiet  now  broke,  as  it  were,  the 
sound  of  an  alarm-bell.  On  January  4,  1854, 
Stephen  A.  Douglas,  a  Vermonter  who  had  gone 
West  and  was  now  a  senator  from  Illinois, 
chairman  of  the  committee  on  Territories,  made 
a  report  on  Nebraska,  the  beginning  of  something 


1854]  SQUATTER  SOVEREIGNTY  169 

most  important.  The  Territory  of  Nebraska  com- 
prised then,  besides  the  present  State  of  that 
name,  Kansas,  North  and  South  Dakota,  Mon- 
tana, Wyoming,  and  part  of  Colorado.  Within 
its  485,000  square  miles,  scarcely  a  thousand 
whites  had  as  yet  settled.  But  the  time  had  come 
for  fixing  its  status.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  in 
1820  the  greatly  preponderant  opinion  had  been, 
as  we  have  stated,  that  Congress  had  power  to 
prohibit  slavery  in  the  Territories,  Douglas  enun- 
ciated the  doctrine  that  it  was  unconstitutional, 
and  that  the  Missouri  Compromise  was,  therefore, 
a  wrong.  Citing  the  cases  of  New  Mexico  and 
Utah,  which  had  been  admitted  as  Territories  in 
1850,  with  the  provision  that  the  people  living 
there  should  decide  whether  or  not  slavery  should 
exist,  Douglas  declared  that  this  procedure  recog- 
nized and  established  the  principle  that  the  peo- 
ple of  a  Territory,  not  Congress,  had  power  to 
decide  as  to  its  institutions.  Nebraska,  or  any 
portion  of  it,  ought  to  be  admitted  with  or  with- 
out slavery  as  its  people  might  determine.  For 
thirty-four  years  the  Missouri  Compromise  had 
been  held  to  be  something  fixed.  It  had  been 
hallowed  and  commended  especially  by  the  ad- 
vocacy of  Henry  Clay,  who  had  stood  between 
North  and  South  as  beyond  every  other  the 
pacificator.  Now  suddenly  it  was  called  in  ques- 
tion ;  the  whole  country  shook :  it  was  felt  that  a 
dispute  of  the  gravest  sort  was  opened. 


170  THE   BLACK  SHADOW  [1854 

January  23,  1854,  Douglas  offered  a  second 
bill,  affirming  that  the  slavery  restriction  of  the 
Missouri  Compromise  was  superseded  by  the 
legislation  of  1850  relating  to  New  Mexico  and 
Utah :  the  people  should  decide  as  to  whether 
or  not  there  should  be  slavery;  and  the  great 
Territory  was  to  be  divided  into  a  smaller  Ne- 
braska and  a  division  to  be  called  Kansas, 
whose  western  limit  was  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
The  Southerners  in  Congress  were  coming  to 
favor  largely  the  view  of  Douglas*  But  on 
January  24  appeared  "  The  Appeal  of  the  In- 
dependent Democrats  to  the  People  of  the 
United  States,"  adapted  by  Salmon  P.  Chase 
of  Ohio  from  a  document  prepared  by  Joshua 
R.  Giddings,  of  the  same  State,  and  corrected 
by  Charles  Sumner  of  Massachusetts  and  Gerrit 
Smith  of  New  York.  The  appeal  was  signed  by 
them  and  two  more,  all  "  Free-soilers,"  for  that 
memorable  name  had  now  appeared.  As  might 
have  been  expected  from  such  authorship,  the 
appeal  was  a  noble  document,  and  it  received  the 
attention  of  the  country.  Douglas  was  incensed, 
lashing  Chase  with  vehemence.  At  once  began 
in  the  Senate  an  extraordinary  debate.  Of  the 
Free-soilers,  Chase  was  the  leader,  who,  though 
somewhat  lacking  in  alert  fluency,  was  clear  and 
strong.  As  he  made  his  plea,  he  was  the  ideal 
of  manly  beauty  and  dignity.  His  able  seconds 
were  great  historic  figures,  already  or  soon  to 


1854]  THE  NEBRASKA  BILL  171 

be  famous,  —  Seward,  Sumner,  old  Ben  Wade 
of  Ohio,  the  rough-hewn  block  of  granite,  and 
Edward  Everett  of  Massachusetts,  the  polished 
Grecian  column.  The  latter  in  particular  argued 
effectively  that  the  measure  of  1850,  respecting 
Utah  and  New  Mexico,  had  to  do  with  those  Ter- 
ritories alone,  and  was  not  a  precedent  for  a 
general  policy. 

On  the  opposing  side  Douglas  had  helpers,  but 
he  was  far  and  away  the  leading  champion.  The 
present  writer  remembers  those  chief  figures  as 
they  stood  in  life.  How  picturesque  was  the  con- 
trast !  Men  of  finer  presence  or  greater  dignity 
of  bearing  than  Chase,  Sumner,  and  Everett  never 
sat  in  a  legislative  body.  Seward,  though  inferior 
to  them  in  personal  graces,  was  equally  impressive 
when  on  fire  with  intellectual  excitement.  Over 
against  this  imposing  group  stood  the  sturdy  figure 
of  the  "  Little  Giant,"  "  with  his  coat-tails  very 
near  the  ground,"  the  face  ruddy,  the  chin  resolute, 
the  brow  ample,  the  voice  full  of  virile  power.  He 
had  a  way  of  throwing  off  collar  and  cravat  and 
unbuttoning  his  vest  that  throat  and  chest  might 
have  free  play.  Through  February  the  contest 
went  on,  the  attention  of  the  country  being  at  the 
sharpest  both  North  and  South.  The  journals  on 
both  sides  were  all  alive.  It  was  tumultuous,  but 
vigorous  and  thoroughly  American,  the  popular 
disputants  everywhere  showing  knowledge  and 
acuteness.  The  doctrine  of  Douglas,  which  really 


172  THE  BLACK  SHADOW  [1854 

originated  with  Lewis  Cass  of  Michigan  (just  as 
the  Missouri  Compromise  originated  otherwise  than 
with  Henry  Clay,  its  great  upholder),  was  at  first 
looked  on  askance  by  the  South,  but  later  adopted 
widely.  It  received  its  most  significant  enuncia- 
tion during  the  night  between  March  3  and  4, 
1854.  The  vote  was  about  to  be  taken,  and  an 
hour  before  midnight  the  Little  Giant  rose  in  the 
Senate  for  his  last  effort.  He  rehearsed  in  all  its 
details  the  doctrine  of  popular,  or,  as  Cass  had 
called  it,  "  squatter  "  sovereignty,  claiming  that  it 
favored  neither  North  nor  South,  but  that  it  sim- 
ply put  slavery  out  of  politics.  As  the  night 
wore  on  his  able  opponents  constantly  interposed 
questions,  which  he  answered  or  parried  with 
courtesy  and  address.  He  spoke  till  daybreak, 
the  crowd  remaining  for  his  last  word.  The  vote 
when  taken  stood  in  his  favor  thirty-seven  to  four- 
teen. Cannon  boomed  from  the  navy-yard,  and 
his  victory  seemed  complete. 

But  the  House  was  to  be  heard  from,  in  which 
the  dissatisfaction  of  the  North  was  plainly  re- 
flected. A  fierce  forensic  battle  went  on  through 
the  spring,  words  now  and  then  being  on  the  very 
point  of  giving  way  to  blows.  The  House  once 
remained  in  session  thirty-six  hours.  The  vote 
came  at  last  at  midnight  of  May  22,  standing  in 
favor  of  the  bill  one  hundred  twelve  to  one  hun- 
dred. Among  the  nays  were  nine  Southerners,  at 
their  head  the  stout  veteran,  Thomas  H.  Benton, 


1854]  ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  173 

now  in  the  House,  who  refused  to  take  part  in 
the  shelving  of  the  great  compromise  which  he 
believed  had  been  his  shelter  for  thirty-three 
years.  Signed  by  President  Pierce,  the  bill  be- 
came law  May  30,  1854,  the  most  momentous 
congressional  measure,  according  to  Rhodes,1 
between  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  and  the 
civil  war. 

Douglas  claimed  the  victory  as  a  personal  tri- 
umph, and  was  not  arrogant.  "  I  had,"  said  he, 
"  the  authority  of  a  dictator  in  both  Houses,"  and 
it  was  hardly  saying  too  much.  Rhodes  thinks 
him  to  have  resembled  in  many  ways  Henry  Clay ; 
in  none  more  than  in  his  power  of  attaching  men 
to  himself.  From  1854  to  1858,  he  was  the 
central  figure  in  the  politics  of  the  country. 
However,  he  had  won  for  the  moment  only.  The 
North  was  profoundly  stirred.  Horace  Greeley 
declared  that  Pierce  and  Douglas  had  made  more 
Abolitionists  than  Garrison  and  Wendell  Phillips 
could  make  in  a  century.  The  South  was  happy, 
but  the  omens  were  ill  for  it.  Of  eighty-eight 
German  newspapers  in  the  country  only  eight 
favored  the  Nebraska  bill.  A  new  party,  the 
Republican,  straightway  began  to  organize.  On 
his  own  Illinois  prairies  the  victor  beheld  suddenly 
confronting  him  a  foe  still  more  adroit,  magnetic, 
"  gigantic  "  than  himself,  —  Abraham  Lincoln. 

The  revulsion  of  feeling  in  the  North  appeared 

1  History  of  the  United  States  from  the  Compromise  of  1850. 


174  THE  BLACK  SHADOW  [1854 

significantly  in  the  new  Congress,  where  the  Dem- 
ocrats stood  in  a  minority  of  seventy-five,  though 
before  they  had  had  a  majority  of  one  hundred 
and  eighty-four.  Douglas's  own  State  sent  to  the 
Senate  Lyman  Trumbull.  The  long-drawn-out 
Kansas  trouble  began.  In  July,  1854,  Eli  Thayer, 
the  moving  spirit  of  the  "  Emigrant  Aid  Society," 
sent  his  first  party  to  Kansas,  people  not  thinking 
at  first  of  Sharpe's  rifles,  but  obeying  with  most 
peaceful  intent  the  law  of  westward  movement. 
The  South  at  once  scented  danger.  The  new 
law  was  in  force  :  Kansas  would  be  free  or  slave 
as  its  settlers  decreed.  A  fact  which  had  not  been 
well  realized  suddenly  became  plain :  the  new  law 
which  the  South  had  so  generally  upheld  was 
going  to  put  the  South  at  a  great  disadvantage. 
With  its  thinner  population,  largely  fixed  upon 
plantations,  it  was  far  less  easy  for  it  to  furnish 
bands  of  emigrants  than  for  the  North,  a  region 
so  much  better  peopled,  and  with  so  many  in  its 
communities  loosely  attached  to  their  homes.  As 
the  Northern  inflow  began,  there  being  nothing  to 
offset  it  from  the  South,  the  alarmed  South  set  in 
motion  a  series  of  inroads  from  the  border,  par- 
ticularly from  Missouri :  parties  passed  over  into 
Kansas,  taking  up  land  and  claiming  possession, 
but  retained  all  the  time  their  old  holdings  and 
citizenship,  to  which  they  proposed  presently  to 
return.  The  feeling  at  the  North  at  once  grew 
hot  that  such  temporary  intruders  could  in  no 


1855]  KANSAS  TROUBLES  175 

fairness  be  called  settlers,  or  allowed  a  voice  in 
the  "  squatter  sovereignty." 

Edwin  Reeder,  a  Douglas  Democrat  from  Penn- 
sylvania, who  had  been  made  Governor  of  Kan- 
sas by  President  Pierce,  was  a  pro-slavery  man, 
declaring  that  "  he  would  as  soon  buy  a  slave  as 
a  horse."  He  proved  himself,  however,  a  brave 
and  fair-minded  official.  When  a  mob  of  border 
ruffians,  unkempt,  armed  to  the  teeth,  soaked  in 
whiskey,  insisted  upon  voting,  threatening  with 
death  all  who  should  protest  against  the  result  of 
the  election,  Reeder  quietly  faced  the  crowd. 
Sitting  behind  his  desk,  on  which  lay  a  cocked 
pistol,  he  threw  out  the  vote  as  illegal  in  seven 
districts  where  protest  had  been  made,  and  ordered 
new  elections.  President  Pierce,  much  under  the 
influence  of  Jefferson  Davis  of  Mississippi,  whose 
name  now  rises,  had  hoped  for  a  different  course 
on  Reeder's  part.  He  tried  to  transfer  him  to 
something  more  brilliant,  but  Reeder  held  stoutly 
to  his  Kansas  work,  until  he  was  at  last  forced  out. 
He  now  threw  in  his  lot  with  the-  free-state  men, 
the  element  largely  preponderating  among  the 
real  settlers,  a  body  headed  by  a  cool  and  prudent 
leader,  Charles  Robinson. 

The  free-state  men,  assembling  in  convention 
at  the  hamlet  of  Topeka,  adopted  a  constitution 
and  elected  officials.  The  border  men  followed  a 
like  course  at  Lecompton,  receiving  countenance 
sometimes  from  men  high  in  place,  like  Atchison, 


176  THE  BLACK   SHADOW  [1855 

the  federal  senator  from  Missouri.  Federal  troops 
came  in  in  the  slavery  interest:  congressional 
committees  visited  and  reported.  There  was  much 
warfare  of  words,  but  so  far  no  bloodshed,  though 
Sharpens  rifles  were  coming  in  with  the  Northern 
inflow ;  and  from  as  deep  in  the  South  as  Mont- 
gomery, Alabama,  a  troop  well  furnished  with 
arms,  and  also  with  Bibles  by  the  ministers  and 
pious  women  of  the  churches,  came  in  on  the 
other  side.  Two  hostile  parties  stood  over  against 
each  other  in  Kansas,  and  violence  could  not  be 
averted.  Lawrence,  headquarters  of  the  free-state 
men,  was  sacked.  So  far,  however,  it  was  but 
the  muttering  of  something  impending. 

At  this  point  enters'  into  our  story  probably 
the  most  picturesque  and  fateful  figure  of  Ameri- 
can history,  John  Brown,  of  Ossawatomie.  He 
had  come  to  Kansas  in  October,  1855,  a  man  tall 
and  gaunt,  with  steady  gray  eyes  beneath  a  high, 
rather  narrow  forehead,  a  fixed  mouth  and  chin, 
his  hair  gray  but  unthinned,  showing  that  he  was 
well  past  middle  life.  After  forty-five  years,  dur- 
ing which  John  Brown  has  been  decried  on  the 
one  hand  as  an  insane  and  bloodthirsty  fanatic, 
and  on  the  other  hand  exalted  as  preeminently  the 
saint  and  martyr  of  his  time,  we  probably  may 
read  the  judgment  of  impartial  history  in  the  calm 
pages  of  Rhodes.  His  mind,  by  no  means  strong, 
had  become  to  some  extent  unbalanced.  He  was 
the  votary  of  a  stern  theology,  "  a  belated  Puri- 


1856]  JOHN  BROWN  177 

tan,"  who  could  have  found  his  counterpart  only 
in  some  Lilburne  or  Wildman,  of  Cromwell's  Iron- 
sides. "  Without  shedding  of  blood  there  can  be 
no  remission  of  sins,"  was  a  favorite  text  with 
him.  Now  this  old  man,  after  an  obscure  and 
unsuccessful  life  as  farmer  and  trader,  surren- 
dering himself  to  the  uncompromising  following 
out  of  a  single  idea,  heralded  and  precipitated  one 
of  the  sternest  conflicts  the  earth  has  ever  seen, 
riding  on  the  fore-front  of  the  storm,  his  soul 
marching  on  through  weapon-gleams  and  battle- 
smoke  long  after  his  body  had  mouldered. 

Five  free-state  men  had  laid  down  their  lives. 
According  to  John  Brown's  logic,  five  of  the 
other  side  must  make  the  balance  square.  In  his 
own  family  his  ascendency  was  complete :  four 
sons,  a  son-in-law,  and  two  others  made  up,  under 
his  imperious  will,  an  unquestioning  band  for  a 
secret  expedition.  To  one  who  demurred  when 
the  bloody  scheme  was  unfolded,  he  replied  that 
he  had  no  choice,  —  that  it  had  been  decreed  from 
all  eternity;  he  was  the  instrument  of  the  ven- 
geance of  God.  Three  Southern  men,  a  father  and 
two  sons  named  Doyle,  men  inoffensive,  against 
whom  no  charge  could  be  brought,  were  com- 
pelled, it  was  May  24,  1856,  to  go  with  them ; 
and  the  three  next  morning  were  found  murdered. 
The  weapon  evidently  had  been  a  short  cutlass 
which  Brown  had  brought  with  him  from  Ohio. 
A  Southern  man  named  Wilkinson,  forced  from 


178  THE  BLACK  SHADOW  [1856 

his  home  in  spite  of  the  entreaties  of  his  sick 
wife,  was  next  day  found  murdered,  evidently  by 
the  same  means.  The  tale  of  victims  still  lacked 
one :  he  was  found  in  William  Sherman,  slain 
in  like  fashion.  Like  the  Doyles,  the  other  vic- 
tims were  blameless  except  in  being  from  the 
South.  Twenty-three  years  after,  one  of  the  band, 
Townsley,  told  the  story,  how  the  old  man  gave 
the  signal  and  the  sons  and  followers  did  the 
deeds,  though  in  the  case  of  the  elder  Doyle  the 
old  man  himself  did  not  withhold  his  hand.  At 
prayer  the  next  morning,  he  lifted  up  hands  still 
bloody  from  the  fearful  work.  Of  course  the 
effect  of  the  massacres  was  to  exasperate  the  con- 
flict. Though  the  free-staters  promptly  disavowed 
Brown's  actions,  the  Southerners  were  for  re- 
prisals, and  an  armed  band  set  out  to  destroy  Os- 
sawatomie.  Guerrilla  warfare  became  rife,  while 
United  States  troops  tried  to  maintain  order ; 
but  before  the  year  1856  ended,  fully  two  hun-, 
dred  lives  had  been  lost,  and  $2,000,000  in  pro- 
perty destroyed ;  and  it  was  hard  to  tell  which 
side  had  been  the  more  lawless. 

An  episode  of  this  seething  time  was  the 
Dred  Scott  decision,  through  which  the  Supreme 
Court,  for  the  first  time,  rendered  an  opinion  on 
the  great  matter  which  had  been  in  dispute. 
Dred  Scott  had  been  the  slave  of  an  army  sur- 
geon, who  took  him  and  his  family  from  Mis- 
souri, where  he  had  for  the  most  part  lived,  to 


1857]  DRED  SCOTT  DECISION  179 

Fort  Snelling,  in  Minnesota,  where  he  remained 
two  years.  By  the  Missouri  Compromise  slavery 
was  interdicted  in  Minnesota,  and  Dred  Scott 
sued  at  the  Supreme  Court  for  the  freedom  of 
himself  and  family,  on  the  ground  that  his  resi- 
dence in  Minnesota  gave  them  that  right.  At 
the  head  of  the  Supreme  Court  was  Chief  Justice 
Roger  B.  Taney,  a  Marylander  appointed  by 
Jackson,  a  judge  of  ability,  whose  great  age  had 
not  impaired  his  powers.  The  majority  of  the 
court  were  Southern  men :  but  two  were  from  the 
North,  one  Benjamin  R.  Curtis,  a  judge  among 
the  ablest.  The  question  as  argued  was  twofold  : 
1st.  Could  a  slave,  whose  ancestors  were  slaves, 
be  a  citizen  of  the  United  States,  and  so  be  com- 
petent to  sue  at  the  Supreme  Court  ?  2d.  Was 
the  Missouri  Compromise  constitutional,  or  was 
the  doctrine  of  the  Nebraska  bill  the  true  one, 
that  not  Congress  but  the  settlers  must  decide 
as  to  slavery  ?  If  the  latter  doctrine  were  true, 
since  the  Minnesota  squatters  were  few  and  far 
between,  and  had  never  passed  on  the  matter, 
Dred  Scott  had  nothing  to  stand  on.  The  memo- 
rable decision  was  rendered,  after  long  expecta- 
tion, March  6,  1857,  two  days  after  the  inaugura- 
tion of  President  Buchanan.  It  was  ably  stated 
by  Taney,  all  the  court  concurring  but  two.  As 
to  the  first  question,  the  right  of  one  who  had 
been  a  slave  to  sue  was  denied.  As  to  the  second 
question,  the  doctrine  of  the  Nebraska  bill  was 


180  THE   BLACK  SHADOW  [1858 

fully  sustained.  Justice  Curtis,  however,  for  the 
minority  maintained,  1st,  that  negroes  were  citi- 
zens of  States  at  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution  : 
if  citizens  of  States,  they  became  citizens  of  the 
United  States ;  2d,  as  to  the  power  of  Congress 
to  prohibit  slavery  in  the  Territories,  he  cited 
eight  instances  where  it  had  been  done,  the  bills 
being  signed  by  all  the  Presidents  from  Washing- 
ton to  John  Quincy  Adams.  Besides,  slavery 
"  being  contrary  to  natural  right  is  created  by 
municipal  law,  which  an  enactment  of  Congress 
might  contravene." 

Meantime  the  Kansas  conflict  went  forward. 
Buchanan,  who,  no  less  than  Pierce,  was  greatly 
under  the  influence  of  Jefferson  Davis,  threw  the 
weight  of  the  government,  so  far  as  he  could  and 
dared,  against  the  free-staters.  These  increased 
continually  in  numbers  and  importance,  until  it 
became  plain  even  to  the  blindest  zealots  that  if 
popular  sovereignty  was  to  rule,  they  must  carry 
the  day.  In  1858,  John  Brown  appeared  once 
more  in  Kansas,  a  long  white  beard,  which  he  had 
not  worn  before,  imparting  a  new  touch  of  weird- 
ness  to  his  grim,  set  countenance.  He  presently 
led  a  raid  into  Missouri  for  the  liberation  /of 
slaves,  during  which  a  man  was  slain,  conducting 
his  party  of  law-breakers  afterward  by  the  ferry 
at  Detroit  into  Canada.  So  he  passed  on  to  the 
tragic  days  at  Harper's  Ferry ;  and  thence  to  his 
lonely,  mountain-guarded,  northern  grave.  The 


1858]  LINCOLN  AND   DOUGLAS  181 

Southern  men  in  desperation  sought  at  Lecomp- 
ton  to  force  upon  Kansas,  now  seeking  admission 
to  the  Union,  a  constitution  in  their  interest. 
When  it  came  to  a  vote,  out  of  13,088, 11,300  were 
opposed,  and  the  matter  was  decided.  Now  it 
was  that  Douglas  acted  bravely  and  consistently, 
declaring  that  the  case  was  plain,  that  the  people 
had  decided  for  freedom.  At  last,  in  1861,  Kan- 
sas was  admitted  as  a  free  State. 

Before  the  cyclone  of  civil  war  burst  out  of 
the  black  shadow,  ever  broadening  and  deepening, 
one  last  episode,  of  highest  significance  and  in- 
terest, found  its  scene  in  the  Valley  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi. When  Douglas,  flushed  with  his  triumph 
in  Congress,  holding  in  the  hollow  of  his  hand 
the  decision  in  both  Houses,  came  home  to  Illi- 
nois to  find  the  North  frowning  ominously  and 
his  own  State  estranged,  one  voice  it  was  beyond 
all  others  that  bore  him  down  with  disapproval. 
Now  it  was,  during  1858,  that  the  prolonged  de- 
bate, adjourned  and  again  adjourned  from  place 
to  place  until  the  area  of  a  great  State  became  its 
theatre,  went  forward  in  the  sight  and  hearing  of 
many  thousands  of  men.  Of  the  contestants 
Douglas  possessed  ability,  if  we  may  trust  Horace 
Greeley,  to  which  it  would  be  hard  to  assign 
limits :  his  opponent,  second  only  to  Washington 
in  civic  virtues,  has  come  to  be  held  for  wisdom 
and  capacity  perhaps  the  chief  of  Americans. 
As  the  intellectual  wrestle  went  forward,  now  on 


182  THE  BLACK  SHADOW  [1860 

the  prairie,  now  in  the  grove,  now  on  the  hillside, 
the  open  heavens  alone  furnishing  a  canopy  wide 
enough  to  cover  the  crowds  that  gathered,  the 
world  first  began  to  know  the  power  and  worth 
of  Abraham  Lincoln.  That  debate  made  him 
President ;  and  that  he  became  President  was  the 
signal  to  the  cannon. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE   CIVIL   WAR 

THE  centre  and  focus  of  the  civil  war  was  un- 
mistakably on  the  soil  of  Virginia,  where  the 
North  and  the  South  fought  back  and  forth  for 
four  years,  on  the  one  hand  trying  to  seize  Wash- 
ington, on  the  other  hand,  Richmond.  There  the 
armies  were  largest;  there  the  leaders,  on  the 
Southern  side  at  least,  were  the  ablest.  The  civil 
war  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  was  subsidiary  to 
this :  but  it  must  be  understood  that  it  was  not 
for  that  reason  of  small  account.  Rarely  in 
history  has  there  been  a  more  impressive  display 
of  military  energy ;  rarely  have  armies  been 
larger ;  and  only  such  battles  as  Borodino  and 
Leipsic  surpass  in  gloomy  grandeur  the  more  im- 
portant engagements. 

Following  the  remark  of  John  Fiske  (whose 
"  Mississippi  Valley  in  the  Civil  War "  has 
helped  much  the  old  veteran  of  that  time  who 
writes  these  pages),  it  is  to  be  noted  that  although 
the  war  began  in  the  East,  with  the  firing  on 
Sumter,  the  commencement  of  victory  was  in 
the  West,  in  holding  Missouri  to  the  Union  in 


184  THE  CIVIL  WAR  [1861 

1861.  That  State,  largely  peopled  from  the 
South,  and  established  as  a  slave  State  by  the 
Missouri  Compromise,  had  latterly  received  a 
strong  Northern  infusion ;  numerous  Germans  had 
also  come  in,  who  to  a  man  were  anti-slavery: 
the  population  was  therefore  much  divided.  That 
Missouri  was  saved  to  the  Union  was  due  to  the 
courage  and  ability  of  two  men,  Frank  P. 
Blair,  a  St.  Louis  lawyer,  afterwards  a  major- 
general,  but  in  this  early  day  chairman  of  the 
Union  committee  of  safety,  and  Nathaniel  Lyon, 
captain  of  the  2d  Infantry,  and  afterwards  a 
general,  in  command  at  first  of  a  few  troops  at 
the  St.  Louis  arsenal.  When  the  governor  of 
Missouri  had  schemed  to  use  the  state  troops  at 
Camp  Jackson,  in  St.  Louis,  to  swing  the  State 
over  to  the  South,  Blair  and  Lyon,  May  9,  1861, 
promptly  captured  them.  Lyon  followed  up  the 
blow  by  an  energetic  campaign  in  which  the  Con- 
federate force  was  worsted  and  in  a  fair  way  to  be 
utterly  driven  out  of  Missouri.  He  was  displaced, 
however,  by  the  incapable  Fremont.  Left  with- 
out reinforcements  or  resources,  he  threw  him- 
self, August  10,  upon  a  hostile  army  of  twice 
his  number  at  Wilson's  Creek,  and  died  gloriously 
at  the  head  of  his  men,  —  the  extinction  of  a  life 
of  the  brightest  promise.  A  Union  victory  soon 
after  at  Pea  Ridge,  in  Arkansas,  practically  ended 
all  serious  warfare  west  of  the  Mississippi.  There 
were  battles,  indeed,  but  in  comparison  with  the 


1861]  GRANT  AND  SHERMAN  185 

fierce  campaigning  to  the  east  of  the  river,  all 
were  of  small  account,  and  need  no  mention  here. 

On  the  9th  of  May,  1861,  in  the  Camp  Jack- 
son time,  in  St.  Louis,  while  a  voluble  young 
Southerner,  in  a  street-car,  excited  over  an  order 
to  take  down  a  rebel  flag  which  had  been  dis- 
played in  Pine  Street,  was  declaiming  over  the 
intolerance  which  forbade  people  to  fly  whatso- 
ever flag  they  chose,  a  small,  shabbily  dressed, 
middle-aged  man  in  a  corner  of  the  car  inter- 
rupted him  with  the  remark,  that  "  perhaps  the 
intolerance  was  not  so  great  after  all.  Although 
there  had  been  much  flying  of  rebel  flags  of  late, 
he  had  noticed  that  so  far  no  one  had  been  hanged 
for  it,  though  many  deserved  to  be."  It  was  the 
first  shot  fired  during  the  war  by  Ulysses  Simp- 
son Grant.  William  Tecumseh  Sherman,  then 
president  of  the  Fifth  Street  Railroad  Company, 
also  had  the  war  for  the  first  time  brought  home 
to  him  in  those  days  :  the  present  writer  once  got 
the  story,  long  after,  from  Sherman  himself,  driv- 
ing past  the  site  of  Camp  Jackson.  Within  a 
few  days  both  men  had  crossed  the  river,  one  to 
take  command  of  the  21st  Illinois,  the  other  of 
the  13th  regulars,  at  Washington. 

The  career  of  Grant  is  one  of  the  most  singular 
in  history.  Up  to  middle  life  he  was  a  failure. 
Though  doing  his  duty  well  in  Mexico  as  a  sub- 
altern of  infantry,  he  could  afterwards  make  his 
living  neither  as  a  farmer  nor  a  business  man  ; 


186  THE  CIVIL  WAR  [1862 

and  at  thirty-nine,  with  a  taste  for  drink,  and  an 
anxious  wife  and  family  to  be  supported,  he  had 
been  taken  by  his  perplexed  father  into  the  little 
leather  store  at  Galena,  Illinois,  where  he  sack 
into  obscurity  so  deep  that  few  knew  of  his  ex- 
istence. But  with  the  outbreak  of  war  the  fish 
found  at  last  its  water.  As  colonel  of  the  21st 
Illinois,  he  soon  showed  that  he  could  discipline 
and  organize.  Stationed  at  Cairo,  at  the  junction 
of  the  Ohio  and  Mississippi,  as  a  brigadier  he 
showed  presently  his  strategic  eye  by  the  seizure 
of  Paducah,  a  town  commanding  the  mouths  of 
the  Tennessee  and  Cumberland  rivers,  pathways 
into  the  heart  of  the  Confederacy.  The  action  at 
Belmont,  which,  though  not  brilliantly  successful, 
owing  to  the  rawness  of  the  troops,  yet  showed 
Grant  to  be  cool,  energetic,  and  resourceful, 
made  his  name  generally  known.  In  February 
of  1862,  the  capture  of  Fort  Henry  and  Fort 
Donelson  made  the  world  sure  that  a  leader  had 
come  at  last.  His  audacity  here  was  powerfully 
helped  by  the  cowardice  and  incompetency  of 
the  rebel  leaders,  who  when  Fort  Henry,  the 
less  important  post,  on  the  Tennessee,  had  sur- 
rendered after  a  combined  attack  by  army  and 
gunboats,  remained  inactive  in  Fort  Donelson, 
twelve  miles  distant  on  the  Cumberland,  while 
Grant  in  the  wintry  weather  drew  his  lines  about 
their  works.  The  chief,  Floyd,  lately  Buchanan's 
Secretary  of  War,  and  the  second  in  command, 


1862]  SHILOH  187 

Pillow,  seemed  to  have  no  thought  but  for  their 
personal  safety,  and  fled  up  the  stream  in  a 
small  steamer.  Simon  B.  Buckner,  third  in  com- 
mand, was  a  soldier  of  different  stamp,  but  it  was 
now  too  late.  His  left  was  assaulted  by  C.  F. 
Smith,  a  most  capable  soldier,  and  his  centre  was 
broken  by  Lew  Wallace.  The  place  presently 
fell,  with  a  loss  to  the  Confederacy  of  15,000  men 
and  65  cannon.  The  Confederate  line  of  defense, 
running  from  eastern  Kentucky  to  the  Missis- 
sippi, fell  in  as  an  arch  falls  when  the  keystone 
is  knocked  out. 

The  rising  fame  of  Grant  gained  little  from  the 
great  battle  of  Shiloh,  which  followed  in  April. 
Success  had,  perhaps,  made  him  over-confident : 
the  great  general  must  learn  his  trade  like  a 
common  man  ;  and  he  stationed  his  army  unin- 
trenched  at  Pittsburg  Landing,  intent  upon  the 
assault  of  Corinth,  twenty  miles  distant,  where 
Albert  Sidney  Johnston,  the  Confederate  com- 
mander, lay  with  his  host.  Grant's  cardinal  and 
most  excellent  principle  was,  "  not  to  be  over- 
anxious yourself  about  what  your  enemy  is  going 
to  do,  but  to  make  him  anxious  about  what  you 
are  going  to  do."  He  believed  thoroughly  in 
holding  the  initiative,  and  was  from  first  to  last 
always  the  assailant.  Intent  on  his  projected 
attack,  he  left  his  front  open,  quite  forgetting  that 
where  his  army  could  get  out  it  was  quite  pos- 
sible for  his  enemy  to  get  in.  On  the  7th  of 


188  THE   CIVIL  WAR  [1862 

April,  1862,  Grant  being  at  Savannah  some  miles 
away,  the  blow  fell.  Hardee,  Bragg,  Brecken- 
ridge,  and  Polk,  soldiers  of  different  temper  from 
Floyd  and  Pillow,  led  the  rush  of  40,000  men 
upon  their  unexpectant  adversaries,  and  for  many 
hours  things  looked  dark  for  the  cause  of  the 
Union. 

"  General  Sherman,  was  there  not  great  de- 
moralization the  first  'day  at  Shiloh,  and  was  there 
not  much  confusion  at  the  rear  ?  " 

We  were  a  party  of  a  dozen  met  at  a  quiet 
dinner  many  years  after,  to  hear  Sherman  tell 
John  Fiske  the  story  of  his  campaigns. 

"  I  saw  no  demoralization,"  was  the  reply. 
"  At  the  front,  where  I  was,  every  man  was  do- 
ing his  best.  The  rear  of  a  fighting  army,  with 
the  wounded  coming  back,  and  the  cowards  skulk- 
ing, who  are  always  in  some  proportion,  is  always 
a  bad  place  from  which  to  judge  of  results." 

Unquestionably,  however,  the  outlook  for  the 
Union  was  bad  throughout  the  forenoon.  The 
positions  held  by  Grant's  front  were  all  captured, 
the  divisions  driven  back  and  dislocated,  and  a 
fearful  loss  inflicted.  Prentiss,  after  a  brave 
resistance  at  a  place  which  came  to  be  known  as 
the  Hornet's  Nest,  was  captured  at  last  with  the 
2200  survivors  of  his  division,  and  the  fate  of 
Sherman  and  the  other  commanders  seemed  very 
doubtful.  But  at  half-past  two,  Johnston  re- 
ceived a  mortal  wound,  and  fortune  changed. 


1862]  SHILOH  189 

In  the  afternoon  the  gunboats  began  to  find  their 
opportunity,  and  the  array  of  Don  Carlos  Buell, 
27,000  strong,  marching  in  hot  haste,  began  to 
cross  the  river  to  Grant's  help.  Beauregard,  a 
soldier  tried  and  skillful,  who  had  succeeded 
Johnston,  failed  in  no  point  of  conduct.  The 
second  day  the  fierceness  of  the  battle  did  not 
abate ;  but  it  became  plain  that  the  chance  was 
gone,  and  Beauregard  slowly  withdrew.  Out  of 
90,000  engaged,  20,000  had  fallen  dead  and 
wounded.  There  is  no  report  that  Grant  failed 
in  any  way  in  courage.  He  was  at  many  points 
of  danger:  neither,  on  the  other  hand,  does  it,, 
appear  that  he  directed  any  important  movement, 
or  could  manage  to  stem  in  any  considerable  way 
the  imminent  danger.  His  subordinates  acted 
apparently  for  the  most  part  by  and  for  them- 
selves. Moreover,  there  was  no  pursuit,  though 
some  of  Buell's  divisions  had  scarcely  been  en- 
gaged, and  an  officer  like  George  H.  Thomas, 
already  famous,  was  right  at  hand  for  the  work. 
Grant's  fame  after  Shiloh  underwent  some 
eclipse :  fortunately  it  was  only  temporary  ;  and 
when  his  opportunity  came  again,  he  showed  that 
in  his  harsh  schooling  he  had  been  an  apt  and 
attentive  pupil. 

In  this  spring  of  1862,  there  was  enterprise 
elsewhere  than  in  Tennessee.  Island  No.  10,  on 
the  Mississippi,  was  captured,  with  7000  men,  with 
accompaniments  of  cannonading  and  midnight 


190  THE  CIVIL  WAR  [1862 

running  of  batteries  more  melodramatic  than 
really  terrible.  In  the  far  South,  too,  Farragut, 
one  of  the  few  men  of  Spanish  blood  who  in  the 
history  of  the  United  States  have  attained  great 
fame,  captured  New  Orleans  by  a  series  of  opera- 
tions full  of  daring  and  skill ;  after  which  feat  he 
dashed  up  the  river  to  a  point  above  Vicksburg. 
In  the  early  summer  of  1862,  he  might  easily 
have  seized  Vicksburg  with  the  help  of  a  small 
land  force  ;  but  Halleck,  in  command  of  100,000 
men  lying  practially  idle  within  easy  reach,  could 
not  spare  a  detachment.  Soon  Van  Dorn,  sent 
by  Braxton  Bragg,  Beauregard's  successor,  turned 
Vicksburg  into  a  veritable  Gibraltar,  against 
which  Grant,  at  last  restored  to  his  command  and 
in  a  measure  rid  of  Halleck,  now  in  Washington, 
began  in  the  late  fall  of  1862  an  ever  memorable 
campaign. 

Other  good  soldiers  were  now  thrusting  to  the 
front.  Bragg,  marching  rapidly  northward,  hop- 
ing to  seize  Louisville  and  Cincinnati,  was  fol- 
lowed hard  by  Buell,  and  forced  to  turn  back 
after  a  fruitless  effort.  Buell  was  now  unjustly 
displaced,  the  Union  losing  thereby  the  service  of 
a  good  sword  and  a  loyal  spirit.  One  would  like 
to  think  that  W.  S.  Rosecrans,  who  was  put  in  his 
place,  was  a  soldier  as  skillful  as  he  was  brave  and 
chivalrous.  But  he  was  not  a  favorite  of  fortune, 
and  in  his  first  trial  came  but  lamely  off.  At  the 
end  of  1862,  Federals  and  Confederates,  each 


1862]  STONE   RIVER  191 

army  some  40,000  strong,  confronted  each  other  \  £  ry 
on  Stone  River,  in  central  Tennessee,  both  armies 
eager  for  battle  after  their  wearisome  marching  of 
the  fall,  and  urged  on  to  activity  by  impatience 
both  North  and  South.  On  the  last  day  of  the 
year  the  commanders  were  ready.  The  armies 
faced  each  other  in  opposing  lines  running  about 
three  miles  north  and  south,  and  both  command- 
ers hit  upon_the  same  plan  of  attack,  —  to  strike 
by  the  left  wing.  Perhaps  it  was  the  fault  of 
McCook,  whose  corps  held  the  Union  right,  that 
the  position  was  negligently  guarded.  Rosecrans 
was  at  the  left  preparing  his  blow,  but  Bragg  was 
the  prompter.  When  morning  dawned,  the  bri- 
gade commander  at  the  extreme  Federal  right 
was  absent  from  his  post;  so,  too,  the  division 
commander  ;  the  battery  horses  had  been  ridden 
off  to  water.  A  sad  remissness,  for  with  the  first 
light  Patrick  Cleburne,  a  meteoric  soldier,  with 
two  divisions,  dashed  impetuously  against  the  slum- 
bering line.  McCook's  corps,  for  the  most  part, 
all  unready,  was  put  to  flight  at  once,  and  the 
assailants  sped  on  like  prairie-fire  in  the  hope  to 
seize  the  Nashville  road,  to  keep  which  was  for 
Rosecrans  most  imperative.  But  in  the  path  of 
the  foe  stood  a  young  Irish  officer,  whose  quality 
on  that  day,  for  the  first  time,  became  clearly  re- 
vealed, Philip  H,  Sheridan.  With  bayonet  and 
volley  he  breasted  the  charge,  while  Thomas,  just 
behind  in  command  of  the  Federal  centre,  always 


192  THE   CIVIL  WAR  [1862 

immovable  however  headlong  the  hostile  assault, 
stood  thoroughly  ready.  Rosecrans,  giving  up  re- 
luctantly his  own  attack,  which  he  felt  sure  had 
promise  of  the  best,  formed  a  new  line  of  battle, 
while  Van  Cleve  and  Palmer  in  the  "Round 
Forest "  rivaled  the  spirit  of  Sheridan.  There 
was  to  be  no  further  retreat.  Next  day  the  com- 
bat was  but  listless,  an  intermission  of  serious 
strife,  though  the  Federal  commander  seized  the 
heights  he  had  coveted  at  first :  these  he  held  the 
next  day  against  Bragg's  most  impetuous  efforts. 
Rosecrans  maintained  his  ground,  Bragg  retiring 
unmolested.  The  battle  was  indecisive,  the  Con- 
federates being  no  nearer  to  Nashville  than  before, 
the  Federals  no  nearer  to  Chattanooga.  In  the 
history  of  warfare  strife  has  seldom  been  more 
stubborn  than  at  .Stone  River. 

Meantime  Grant,  intent  on  Vicksburg,  had 
turned  southward,  and  was  knitting  his  brow 
over  a  knotty  problem.  History  does  not  record 
that  he  ever  received  a  lesson  from  any  persistent 
spider;  but  it  is  certain  that  not  until  the  sev- 
enth trial  did  he  find  success,  and  Robert  Bruce 
himself  was  not  more  pertinacious.  He  tried 
from  the  east;  but  a  cowardly  subordinate  sur- 
rendered to  raiders  his  main  depot  at  Holly 
Springs  with  $1,500,000  worth  of  stores,  and  his 
approach  there  was  baffled.  He  sent  Sherman 
down  with  32,000  men  from  the  north,  but  they 
fell  back  beaten  December  29,  at  Chickasaw 


1863]  VICKSBURG  193. 

Bayou.  Grant  tried  twice  more  from  the  north, 
pushing  with  gunboats  and  infantry  through 
forest,  swamp,  and  bayou  in  the  water-logged 
country  to  find  a  practicable  point  of  attack. 
He  tried  from  the  west  with  pick  and  spade, 
attempting  a  canal  across  the  bend  opposite  the 
town ;  and  again  working  at  a  remoter  channel 
through  Lake  Providence.  But  the  enemy,  more 
numerous  than  he,  remained  unassailable  on  the 
forbidding  bluff ;  and  the  great  river,  as  if  in 
league  with  the  foe,  bursting  by  its  spring  floods 
new  paths  not  to  be  reckoned  on,  swept  off  his 
constructions  and  drowned  his  beasts  and  men. 
Meantime  the  nation  muttered  impatiently  be- 
cause "  nothing  was  done." 

Why  not  try  from  the  south  ?  thought  Grant ; 
and  an  attempt  was  made,  audacious  to  the  last 
degree.  Are  the  batteries  after  all  so  dan- 
gerous? We  will  see.  So  the  batteries  were 
run,  not  only  by  armored  gunboats,  but  by  un- 
armed transports.  Really,  the  bark  of  Vicksburg 
was  worse  than  its  bite.  Straightway  45,000 
men,  sustaining  and  sustained  by  the  fleet,  now 
below  the  town,  pushed  across  the  river,  and 
dashed  into  the  interior,  quite  careless  of  a  base. 
Sherman  followed  presently  with  another  corps, 
and  every  man  was  needed.  Pemberton  poured 
out  his  superior  numbers  upon  Grant  from  Vicks- 
burg, and  the  capable  Joseph  E.  Johnston  was 
collecting  rapidly  at  Jackson,  fifty  miles  back,  a 


194  THE  CIVIL  WAR  [1863 

new  and  powerful  force.  It  was  like  the  leap 
of  a  trapeze  performer  through  air  alive  with 
swords  and  flame  from  bar  to  distant  bar.  For- 
saking his  hold  at  Grand  Gulf,  with  four  days' 
rations  in  his  soldiers'  haversacks,  Grant  plunged 
between  the  two  hostile  armies,  fighting  five 
pitched  battles  in  a  fortnight,  living  off  the  coun- 
try, clutching  at  last  the  hold  upon  his  new  base 
at  Haines's  Bluff  with  complete  success.  On  the 
20th  of  May,  Grant,  with  Sherman,  whose  corps 
was  in  the  advance,  rode  to  the  brink  of  the  bluff, 
at  the  base  of  which,  close  to  the  scene  of  Sher- 
man's defeat  the  preceding  winter,  the  Federal 
transports  lay  ready  to  discharge  supplies.  The 
generous  subordinate  was  loud  in  his  confession 
and  tribute :  till  that  moment  he  had  had  no  faith 
that  his  leader's  scheme  would  succeed.  Success, 
however,  was  triumphant;  few  achievements  in 
warfare  could  parallel  it ;  to  Grant  alone  belonged 
the  glory.  The  imperturbable  little  man,  says  the 
story,  the  "  Mr.  Grant,"  whom  Abraham  Lincoln 
"rather  liked,"  and  had  stubbornly  retained, 
though  the  cry  for  his  dismissal  had  been  loud, 
smiled  and  said  nothing.  The  fall  of  Vicksburg 
was  now  but  a  question  of  a  few  weeks.  It  came 
July  4, 1863,  with  the  rendering  up  of  37,000  men, 
172  cannon,  and  the  strongest  fortress  in  the  land. 
The  rebel  grip  at  Port  Hudson,  250  miles 
below,  was  soon  after  loosed,  and  the  Mississippi 
was  opened.  The  present  writer  remembers  how, 


1863]  PORT  HUDSON  195 

after  a  month's  work  in  the  rifle-pits,  close  under 
the  enemy's  rampart,  we,  a  company  tattered, 
wasted  by  heat  and  malaria,  inured  to  the  sight 
of  wounds  and  death,  were  withdrawn  to  the 
woods  in  the  rear  for  a  short  rest  out  of  rifle 
range.  An  orderly  with  a  document  hurried 
through  the  camp ;  it  was  the  8th  of  July, 
and  the  cry  presently  broke  forth,  "  Vicksburg 
surrendered  on  the  4th !  "  The  preceding  De- 
cember we  had  sailed  into  the  harbor  at  Ship 
Island,  the  anchors  catching  where  those  of  the 
great  fleet  caught  which  brought  Pakenham  to 
his  doom  in  1815.  Next  morning  we  entered  the 
southwest  pass  of  the  Mississippi,  following  in 
the  track  of  Farragut  the  preceding  spring,  past 
the  forts  to  the  city  he  captured.  There  his 
fleet  still  lay,  the  decks  alive  with  blue  jackets, 
the  heavy  cannon  trained  upon  the  town  which 
only  their  open  muzzles  could  hold  in  submission. 
They  saluted  our  coming  and  we  heard  the  stern 
voices.  The  following  March,  while  the  column 
was  sleeping  in  the  road  within  range  of  the  Port 
Hudson  guns,  we  were  startled  at  midnight  by 
those  same  warlike  voices.  Farragut  was  forcing 
his  way  past  the  batteries,  a  terrible  battle  in  the 
darkness,  to  which  we  hearkened  from  the  river's 
brink,  —  intermittent  flashes  and  thunders,  then 
at  last  a  steadier  gleam  as  a  great  ship  on  fire 
floated  slowly  downstream.  But  the  Hartford 
got  past,  and  Farragut  extended  a  hand  to  Grant 


196  THE  CIVIL  WAR  [1863 

struggling  with  his  problems.  Since  that  night 
we  had  marched  and  fought.  Port  Hudson  had 
beaten  back  two  assaults,  with  a  loss  to  us  of 
many  hundreds.  We  had  burrowed  into  the 
hard  clay  of  the  bluff,  driving  the  sap  against  the 
obstinate  rampart,  and  were  ready  for  another 
spring ;  but  Vicksburg  had  surrendered  and  our 
work  was  done. 

We  went  up  the  river  on  the  first  unarmed 
boat  that  made  the  journey.  Vicksburg  frowned 
as  we  passed  from  the  long  line  of  batteries  on 
the  height.  The  gunboats  lay  anchored  in  front 
with  curving,  turtle-like  backs,  the  muzzles  visi- 
ble through  the  ports  that  had  so  often  broken 
a  way  for  the  Union  advance.  They  were  silent 
now  and  friendly ;  nor  was  there  hostile  scene  or 
sound  as  we  went  northward  between  banks  green 
with  the  summer.  Memphis,  Island  No.  10,  Co- 
lumbus, —  these  now  offered  no  bar,  and  we 
landed  at  last  at  Cairo,  whence  only  eighteen 
months  before  the  unknown  brigadier  had  started 
out  against  Forts  Henry  and  Donelson.  Scarcely 
even  in  Napoleon's  career  had  there  been  such  a 
year  and  a  half. 

The  spirit  of  neither  army  —  Federal  nor  Con- 
federate —  in  Tennessee  had  been  broken  by  the 
sharp  experience  of  Stone  River.  The  spring 
and  summer  of  1863  were  spent  in  wide  manoeu- 
vring, the  consequence  being  that  early  in  Septem- 
ber, Rosecrans  was  in  possession  of  Chattanooga, 


1863]  CHICKAMAUGA  197 

quite  too  confident  that  he  had  worsted  Bragg, 
who  had  for  the  moment  retired  southward.  The 
Federal  corps  were  widely  scattered  in  a  difficult 
mountain  country ;  and  on  the  other  side  the  Rich- 
mond authorities,  determined  upon  holding  East 
Tennessee,  dispatched  thither  James  Longstreet 
with  a  force  of  the  best  soldiers  of  Lee's  Army 
of  Northern  Virginia.  These  began  to  arrive  on 
the  20th  of  September,  just  at  the  moment  when 
Rosecrans,  after  concentration,  was  forming  his 
line  of  battle  in  the  Chickamauga  valley,  opposite 
Bragg,  who  on  his  part  was  quite  ready  once  more 
to  try  conclusions. 

September  19,  Bragg  tried,  as  at  Stone  River, 
to  roll  up  a  Federal  wing,  —  this  time  the  left. 
He  met  with  no  success,  and  it  was  not  until  noon 
of  the  20th  that  the  disaster  befell  that  was  the 
beginning  of  the  end.  Perhaps  it  was  all  due  to 
the  blunder  of  an  aide-de-camp.  One  would  like 
to  think  so,  rather  than  to  believe  there  was  in- 
competency  in  the  general  or  want  of  conduct  in 
the  troops.  The  story  is  that  as  Rosecrans  stood 
arrayed,  three  good  generals,  Wood,  Brannan,  and 
Reynolds,  held  with  their  divisions  the  right  cen- 
tre of  his  line.  Brannan  lay  between  the  others, 
his  line  being  "refused,"  thrown  back  nearly  at 
right  angles  to  the  general  direction,  and  for  the 
most  part  concealed  by  bushes.  An  aide  of 
Thomas  galloping  along  the  front  just  before  the 
moment  of  attack,  not  seeing  Brannan's  men,  re- 


198  THE   CIVIL  WAR  [1863 

ported  to  his  chief  a  gap  in  the  line  of  battle  at 
that  point.  Thomas  reported  at  once  to  his  supe- 
rior ;  and  post  haste  went  the  order  from  Rosecrans 
to  Wood  "  to  close  up  on  Reynolds."  Wood  could 
not  close  up  on  Reynolds  without  marching  around 
behind  Brannan  ;  this  he  promptly  and  faithfully 
did ;  it  is  not  for  a  subordinate  in  the  moment  of 
danger  to  ask  the  why  and  wherefore.  Now,  in- 
deed, there  was  a  gap  in  the  line,  into  which  the 
quick-eyed  Longstreet  threw  immediately  eight 
brigades  under  Hood  and  McLaws,  soldiers  as 
fierce  as  fire.  The  confusion  on  the  Federal  right 
became  utter  and  maddening.  Leaders  and  men 
were  of  the  best.  Phil  Sheridan  was  in  the  midst 
of  it,  and  others  scarcely  less  able  and  courageous 
than  he ;  but  all  order  was  soon  completely  bro- 
ken, and  two  thirds  of  the  Union  army,  with  Rose- 
crans among  them,  in  hot  flight  for  Chattanooga, 
ten  miles  distant.  But  all  did  not  flee.  Thomas, 
retiring  with  his  corps  of  25,000,  cool,  precise, 
well-ordered,  took  up  his  position  at  Horseshoe 
Ridge,  and  throughout  the  dismal  afternoon 
stemmed  the  victorious  rebel  rush  with  a  stub- 
bornness that  has  caused  him  to  pass  into  history 
as  the  "  Rock  of  Chickamauga."  The  levels  at  the 
base  of  the  limestone  ledges  on  which  he  stood 
planted  were  heaped  before  nightfall  with  such 
piles  of  the  dead  as  even  the  gloomiest  battlefields 
have  rarely  shown.  When  all  was  over,  Thomas 
retiring  unmolested  into  the  town  which  his  stand 


1863]  CHATTANOOGA  199 

had  made  tenable,  37,000  lay  fallen  in  the  valley 
behind  him.  It  was  indeed  Chickamauga,  the 
valley  of  death  ! 

Was  it  due  to  the  blunder  of  an  aide?  In  a 
similar  way,  according  to  Mr.  John  C.  Ropes,  the 
mistaken  order  of  an  irresponsible  aide,  on  the 
16th  of  June,  1815,  paralyzed  between  Ligny  and 
Quatre  Bras  the  splendid  corps  of  D'Erlon,  a 
consequence  of  which  was  that  Napoleon,  two 
days  later,  lost  Waterloo.  At  any  rate,  when 
Wood  closed  up  on  Reynolds,  it  was  the  closing 
up  of  Rosecrans.  He  sank  forthwith  out  of 
sight ;  and  only  Grant,  it  was  felt,  could  cope  with 
the  situation. 

Two  months  later,  the  assemblage  of  leaders 
and  forces  about  Chattanooga  was  a  memorable 
one.  Hooker  had  brought  in  a  strong  body  from 
the  Army  of  the  Potomac.  Grant,  Sherman, 
Sheridan,  and  Thomas,  the  four  great  soldiers 
of  the  war  (though  at  that  time  their  titles  to 
supreme  fame  were  not  yet  fully  indicated),  were 
there,  —  at  the  head  of  corps  schooled  in  the 
most  difficult  campaigns.  The  achievement  at 
last  was  worthy  of  such  a  conjunction.  On 
November  26,  the  Army  of  the  Cumberland,  the 
Chickamauga  men,  charged  up  the  almost  bee- 
tling Missionary  Ridge,  four  hundred  feet,  "  with- 
out orders."  The  Army  of  the  Potomac,  Gettys- 
burg men,  having  won  Lookout  Mountain,  rolled 
up  the  Confederate  left ;  meantime  the  Confed- 


200  THE  CIVIL  WAR  [1864 

erate  right  was  beaten  in  by  the  Army  of  the 
Tennessee,  Vicksburg  men.  So  the  year  closed 
in  triumph. 

Grant's  success  at  Chattanooga  raised  him  to 
the  pinnacle.  His  career  henceforth,  it  does  not 
belong  to  us  now  to  consider.  Matched  in  Vir- 
ginia against  Lee,  he  had  such  generalship  to  cope 
with  as  he  had  not  before  encountered,  and  his 
final  success  was  due  more  perhaps  to  tenacity 
and  boundless  resources  in  men  and  means  than 
to  superior  skill.  Sherman,  too,  who  succeeded 
Grant  at  Chattanooga,  as  he  had  done  before  at 
Vicksburg,  passes  now  beyond  our  horizon,  march- 
ing south  out  of  the  Valley,  in  1864,  to  the  strug- 
gle about  Atlanta,  and  thence  on  to  the  sea.  The 
fortunes  of  Thomas,  however,  belong  to  our  story, 
who,  left  on  guard  behind,  closed  most  worthily 
and  memorably  the  mighty  drama  of  the  civil 
war  in  the  Mississippi  Valley. 

Bragg  had  disappeared  from  sight,  and  also 
Joseph  E.  Johnston,  who  had  baffled  the  advance 
of  Sherman  with  an  energy  which  his  superiors 
did  not  appreciate.  In  their  place  now  stood  J. 
B.  Hood,  the  bravest  of  the  brave,  whom  the  shot 
of  Gaines's  Mill,  Gettysburg,  and  Chickamauga 
had  reduced  to  a  mere  fragment  of  a  man,  with 
scarcely  body  enough  to  retain  his  impetuous 
spirit.  From  Alabama,  in  November,  1864,  Hood 
marched  rapidly  into  Tennessee,  driving  before 
him  J.  M.  Schofield,  who,  with  the  4th  and  23d 


1864]  FRANKLIN  201 

corps,  formed  the  advance  guard  of  Thomas, 
lying  at  Nashville.  Schofield,  cool  and  wary, 
retreated  in  good  order  before  his  greatly  supe- 
rior foe.  If  Hood's  skill  had  equaled  his  valor, 
Schofield  might  have  been  caught  and  ruined. 
But  the  latter  escaped  all  perils,  and  on  the 
morning  of  November  30,  daringly  intrenched 
himself  at  Franklin  on  the  Harpeth  River,  resolved 
to  delay,  if  he  could,  the  onward  rush  of  the 
enemy,  that  Thomas  might  have  time  to  complete 
his  plans.  A  notable  battle  was  fought  in  the 
afternoon,  in  a  high  degree  creditable  to  the 
Union  army,  which  repulsed  with  terrible  effect 
the  charge  of  the  Confederates.  In  the  dusk  of 
that  short  autumn  day  fell  nearly  9000  men, 
more  than  two  thirds  Confederate ;  among  them 
eleven  general  officers.  When  darkness  fell, 
Schofield  quietly  withdrew  with  men  and  baggage, 
marching  into  Nashville  with  thirty-three  captured 
flags  and  a  considerable  body  of  prisoners. 

Hood  was  not  delayed,  but  followed  close  upon 
the  track  of  Schofield,  reaching  Nashville  Decem- 
ber 2,  and  intrenching  himself  on  irregular  hills 
south  of  the  city.  Washington  was  in  a  panic 
over  the  possibility  of  a  defeat ;  and  Grant  per- 
haps never  as  a  soldier  appeared  to  less  advan- 
tage than  in  his  distrust  at  this  time  of  Thomas, 
whose  quality  he  should  have  known.  Most  for- 
tunately he  was  not  superseded.  It  is  plain  now 
that  his  means  were  quite  inadequate  to  the  task 


202  THE   CIVIL  WAR  [1864 

set  for  him.  Besides  the  27,000  of  Schofield,  his 
army  during  November  had  been  little  better  than 
in  the  air.  A  good  reinforcement,  however, 
came  in  at  last  from  Missouri ;  and  the  odds  and 
ends,  white  and  colored,  whom  he  could  pick  up 
in  outlying  camps,  and  on  the  road  as  they  re- 
turned from  furlough  and  hospital,  were  rapidly 
compacted  and  drilled.  Horses  were  pressed 
throughout  Tennessee  and  Kentucky,  and  at  last 
in  the  three  arms,  infantry,  artillery,  and  cavalry, 
he  stood  fairly  ready,  —  really  outnumbering 
Hood ;  though  in  quality  the  Southern  force, 
schooled  in  battle  and  long  -  concerted  action, 
might  well  have  been  thought  superior. 

When  the  impatient  North  was  at  the  utmost 
point  of  tension,  Thomas,  now  standing  ready, 
was  still  further  delayed  by  a  wintry  storm  which 
left  the  ground  covered  with  a  glare  of  ice  on 
which  neither  horse  nor  man  could  find  secure 
footing.  But  on  the  morning  of  December  15, 
the  ice  being  gone,  leaving  a  surface  of  mud  which 
fortunately  was  not  deep,  the  battle  began. 
While  one  of  the  Union  wings  occupied  the  Con- 
federates with  a  strong  demonstration,  the  other 
wheeled  resistlessly  southward,  then  eastward,  dis- 
lodging from  their  hills  the  sternly  resisting  foe. 
On  the  16th,  the  battle  continued  further  back, 
and  at  closer  quarters,  until  by  evening  Hood 
was  in  full  flight,  with  the  Union  cavalry  in  close 
pursuit.  No  victory  of  the  war  was  more  vigor- 


1865]  APPOMATTOX  203 

ously  followed  up :  the  retreating  masses  were 
broken  into  fragments  and  the  fragments  fairly 
pulverized.  The  army  of  Hood  practically  van- 
ished, and  with  its  disappearance,  so  far  as  the 
Mississippi  Valley  was  concerned,  the  stubborn 
Confederacy  succumbed. 

In  the  spring  of  1865,  the  Confederate  army  in 
Virginia  had  become  an  isolated  nucleus  of  war- 
like energy,  from  which  at  last  every  supporting 
connection  and  attachment  had  been  knocked 
away.  On  the  east  was  the  sea  swept  by  the  ships 
of  their  foes ;  on  the  west  lowered  Thomas,  pre- 
pared to  descend  upon  them  through  the  passes 
of  the  Alleghanies.  Sherman  rolled  up  from  the 
south,  a  tempest  that  gathered  fury  as  it  sped.  On 
the  north  Grant  smote  implacably.  Not  until  then 
was  the  mighty  Lee  fairly  beaten  to  his  knees. 
Appomattox  became  inevitable :  the  Union  was 
saved. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY  AT  THE   CLOSE   OF  THE 
19TH  CENTURY 

HAS  human  skill  been  able  to  tame  in  any  de- 
gree the  Western  streams  and  make  them  more 
serviceable  to  man?  Probably  they  vary  not 
greatly  from  what  they  were  when  the  country 
was  wild.  Probably  in  an  earlier  day  the  floods 
were  not  much  higher  than  now  ;  nor  is  the  sum- 
mer diminution  at  the  present  time  much  greater 
than  formerly.  From  Pittsburg  the  "  broad- 
horns  "  used  to  come  down  to  Louisville  in  high 
water  within  a  week;  in  low  water  the  course 
would  be  three  times  as  long,  their  draught  of 
three  feet  requiring  careful  avoidance  of  sand- 
bars. It  would  take  as  long  now.  Standing  to-day 
on  the  shore  of  the  main  river  or  any  one  of  its 
important  affluents,  at  a  time  of  flood,  one  sees 
the  broad,  turbid,  swirling  stream  bearing  upon 
its  surface  uprooted  trees,  possibly  cabins  or  barns, 
borne  off  from  the  overflowed  bottoms.  Let  the 
spectator  take  heed  as  to  his  footing.  The  bank, 
apparently  firm,  may  have  been  sapped  by  the 
mighty  shouldering  current ;  and  at  any  time  a 


RIVER  ENGINEERING  205 

square  rod,  or  indeed  an  acre  or  two,  may  cave 
in  without  warning,  sliding  in  a  moment  with  all 
it  holds,  tree,  house,  beast,  or  man,  under  the  wa- 
ters. While  the  river  thus  devours  one  shore,  it 
builds  up  another  shore  farther  down,  one  farmer 
thus  undergoing  robbery  from  the  lordly  free- 
booter, while  his  neighbor  on  the  opposite  bank 
receives  largess. 

There  is  no  better  engineering  skill  than  that 
which  has  tried  to  cope  with  the  Western  rivers, 
but  in  some  respects  they  have  proved  so  far 
quite  beyond  human  control.  The  complexity  of 
the  problem  is  baffling.  How  to  arrange  a  sys- 
tem of  works  which  shall  hold  the  country  pro- 
tected from  overflow  when  the  river  is  at  flood ; 
and  at  the  same  time  secure  a  practicable  channel 
for  boats  through  the  ever-shifting  shallows  when 
the  river  is  low  ?  The  axe,  the  shovel,  the  dredge, 
the  crowbar,  the  crane,  with  all  they  can  bring 
to  pass,  —  mattresses  of  willow  loaded  with  stone, 
great  timber-cribs,  the  most  elaborate  masonry, 
—  all  that  hands  numerous,  patient,  skillful, 
backed  by  the  best  brains  and  a  lavish  govern- 
ment, —  all  that  they  can  do  has  been  done  again 
and  again ;  but  the  giant,  rising  in  its  power,  has 
swept  everything  away  without  trace.  The  cur- 
rent to-day  a  quarter  of  a  mile  wide  may  be  next 
week  ten  miles  wide :  as  it  subsides,  the  river 
may  choose  a  channel  entirely  new;  such  con- 
structions as  are  attempted  must  rest  upon  a 


206    CLOSE  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

base,  not  of   rock,  but   of   shifting   alluvium,  on 
which  no  dependence  can  be  placed. 

Though  the  problem  is  so  difficult,  and  in  great 
part  not  yet  solved,  the  engineers  have  done  some 
remarkable  things.  It  has  been  possible  to  bridge 
the  Mississippi  even  in  its  lower  course  as  far 
down  as  Memphis,  and  the  achievement  in  this 
kind  of  James  B.  Eads  at  St.  Louis  has  ranked  as  a 
noteworthy  triumph.  Eads,  a  self-taught  man,  at 
work  on  the  river  from  boyhood  until  at  last  he  be- 
came a  "  wrecker,"  saving  craft  that  got  into  diffi- 
culty, and  removing  the  snags  and  sawyers  which 
from  the  first  have  been  sources  of  peril,  became  a 
well-known  man  in  the  days  of  the  war  through 
the  construction  of  the  gunboats  which  seconded 
so  well  the  work  of  the  Western  armies.  Turning 
his  versatile  genius  to  the  task  of  spanning  the 
river,  he  sank  his  vast  piers  that  were  to  support  the 
structure  not  only  through  the  water,  but  through 
the  soil  below  the  water,  until  the  bed-rock  was  at 
last  reached.  In  one  case  the  foundation  layer  of 
the  pier  was  one  hundred  and  ten  feet  below  the 
water  surface  and  ninety  feet  below  the  river- 
bottom,  the  masonry  being  laid  upon  a  caisson,  a 
turtle-like  metal  contrivance  which,  as  the  layers 
were  imposed,  sank  and  sank,  first  through  water, 
then  through  mud.  The  soil  underneath  was 
scooped  out  and  carried  up  Jby  ingenious  "  sand- 
pumps,"  until  at  last  the  contrivance  rested 
squarely  upon  the  immovable  stone.  The  four 


EADS  BRIDGE  AND  JETTIES  207 

piers  having  been  reared,  mighty  constructions 
like  cliffs,  three  arches  of  steel,  with  a  span  each 
of  five  hundred  or  more  feet,  were  thrown  across. 
In  the  case  of  each,  the  metal  framework  shot  out 
into  the  air  above  the  stream,  entirely  unsupported 
from  below,  until,  the  two  parts  meeting,  the  curve 
was  made  perfect.  The  final  result  was  a  sup- 
port for  broad,  smooth  highways  over  which  pass 
day  and  night  the  heaviest  trains  and  laden 
wagons  in  a  multitude ;  a  support  so  secure  that 
even  the  cyclone  of  1896  could  not  disturb  it. 

More  remarkable  even  than  the  St.  Louis 
bridge  are  the  jetties  constructed  afterward  by 
Eads  at  the  South  Pass  of  the  Mississippi.  As 
the  river  pours  out  through  its  passes  into  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico,  the  current  growing  sluggish 
deposits  the  sediment  with  which  it  is  heavily 
laden  on  the  bottom,  so  that  at  each  mouth  and 
for  some  distance  beyond  the  water  is  shoal, 
making  it  impossible  for  ships  of  heavy  draught  to 
enter.  Driving  lines  of  piles  from  the  mouth  of 
the  South  Pass  out  over  the  shallows,  Eads  found 
a  means  of  holding  fast  mattresses  of  willow 
loaded  with  stone.  The  two  long,  slender  lines 
of  work  not  far  apart  have  narrowed  much  the 
channel,  with  the  effect  that  the  current  is  quick- 
ened and  the  silt  scoured  out  and  carried  away 
into  deep  water.  The  expedient  has  proved  en- 
tirely successful,  the  jetties  bringing  to  pass  and 
making  permanent  a  channel  through  which 


208    CLOSE  OF  THE  NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

almost  the  heaviest  of  sea-going  ships  may  move. 
The  benefit  to  the  city  of  New  Orleans  and  to  the 
commerce  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  in  general  is 
almost  incalculable. 

Turning  from  the  river  to  the  area  which  it 
drains,  the  material  resources  which  have  been 
brought  to  light  in  the  Mississippi  Valley,  as  the 
twentieth  century  begins,  are  of  surpassing  rich- 
ness. It  would  be  an  endless  task  to  describe  in 
detail  the  fertility  of  the  soil  of  one  region,  the 
great  forests  of  another,  the  coal  and  metals  of  a 
third.  It  is  quite  certain  that  scarcely  a  square 
mile  of  the  basin  is  unavailable  for  human  uses. 
If  the  farmer  in  some  parts  fails  of  rain,  irrigation 
will  go  a  long  way  toward  making  good  the  lack  ; 
and  where  this  is  impracticable,  the  ranchman 
can  ply  his  vocation  on  plains  and  hills  covered 
by  the  hardy  grasses  that  require  little  moisture. 
The  timber  of  the  river  valleys  and  the  hill-slopes 
attracts  the  lumberman  too  powerfully.  In  the 
arid  and  rocky  districts,  where  all  else  fails,  there 
is  scarcely  a  metal  which  the  miner  may  not  hope 
to  find. 

This  teeming  region  has  been  possessed  by 
civilized  men  with  unexampled  rapidity.  In  the 
portion  east  of  the  river  the  advance  was  not 
slow ;  but  west  of  the  river  it  has  been  far  swifter. 
What  our  grandfathers  believed  to  be  a  country 
not  needing  to  be  thought  of  or  reckoned  with, 
a  wilderness  not  likely  to  be  invaded  until  the 


STATES  ADMITTED  209 

remote  future,  is  at  the  present  moment  about  to  be 
entirely  occupied  by  properly  constituted  States 
of  the  American  Union,  throbbing  and  vigorous 
throughout  with  life.  Arkansas  was  admitted  in 
1835  ;  Iowa  in  1845 ;  Wisconsin  in  1847  ;  Min- 
nesota in  1858  ;  West  Virginia  in  1862.  Since 
the  civil  war  the  procession  of  commonwealths 
has  entered  in  the  following  order,  —  Nebraska, 
1867  ;  Colorado,  1875  ;  North  and  South  Dakota, 
1889;  Montana,  1889;  Wyoming,  1890.  As  the 
new  century  begins,  Oklahoma  stands  at  the  door 
with  every  requisite  ;  and  in  company  with  Ari- 
zona and  New  Mexico,  Territories  lying  just  out- 
side of  our  Valley,  will  without  doubt  soon  be  a 
member  of  the  sisterhood. 

That  wisdom  has  always  been  shown  in  the 
admission  of  these  communities  may  certainly  be 
questioned.  In  one  or  two  cases  the  population 
to  start  with  was  scant,  and  has  increased  but  little. 
It  is  manifestly  unfair  that  a  State  which  is  merely 
a  "  cluster  of  mining  camps  "  should  weigh  as 
powerfully  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States  as 
New  York  or  Illinois.  But  our  system  has  had 
that  inequality  from  the  beginning.  In  the  main, 
however,  the  course  of  things  has  been  as  it  should 
be.  The  new  States  for  the  most  part  are  seats 
of  communities  numerous  and  energetic  in  a  high 
degree :  if  in  some  instances  the  infusion  of  In- 
dian, Mexican,  and  old  Spanish  blood  has  been 
considerable,  the  older  States  of  the  Union  are  in 


210    CLOSE  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

no  position  to  find  fault.  To  receive  new  and 
ever  new  foreign  strains  has  long  been  the  rule : 
the  alien  elements  in  the  far  West  are  no  more 
likely  to  dominate  or  affect  disastrously  the 
Anglo-Saxon  core,  than  are  the  alien  elements  in 
the  far  East.  It  is  probable  that  in  both  regions 
Anglo-Saxondom  will  have  the  force  happily  to 
assimilate  the  stranger  masses  that  are  poured 
in  upon  it  so  abundantly,  gaining  perhaps  new 
energy  from  the  infusion,  as  the  heat  and  light  of 
the  sun  are  believed  to  be  quickened  by  the  con- 
stant absorption  of  streams  of  matter  from  outer 
space. 

The  coming  into  being  of  the  great  New  West 
has  been  a  process  tumultuous,  but  in  the  main 
peaceful.  Frontier  life,  always  to  a  certain  extent 
brutal  and  repulsive,  is  not  different  here.  It 
has  been  necessary  for  the  frontiersman  to  cope 
with  the  Indians  of  the  plains  and  mountains ; 
and  the  savage  foes  have  been  not  less  formidable 
than  were  the  Indians  whom  his  forerunner  was 
forced  to  meet  on  the  "  dark  and  bloody  ground  " 
a  century  ago.  Of  all  Indian  triumphs,  not  one 
has  ever  been  more  signal  than  the  utter  blot- 
ting out  of  Ouster,  in  the  Yellowstone  country, 
in  1876.  The.  inevitable  has  happened  in  the 
West  as  in  the  East.  The  tribes  have  been 
borne  down  ;  it  is  only  here  and  there  that,  at  the 
present  day,  they  can  be  said  to  be  dangerous. 
Nor  can  the  policy  of  the  whites  in  general,  as 


THE  LOCOMOTIVE  211 

regards  the  wild  tribes,  be  severely  censured. 
The  outlook  is  hopeful  for  all  such  as  possess  the 
capacity  to  rise  above  the  barbarism  into  which 
they  were  born.1 

It  is  almost  right  to  say  that  the  Great  West, 
the  America  beyond  the  Mississippi,  is  the  crea- 
tion of  the  locomotive ;  and  as  regards  the  Valley 
east  of  the  river,  its  condition  has  been  profoundly 
modified,  if  not  absolutely  shaped,  by  the  same 
mighty  agency.  In  the  eastern  Valley  the  era  of 
railroad  building  hacl  come  in  not  long  before  the 
civil  war ;  in  the  western  Valley  it  scarcely  began 
until  the  war  closed.  Except  on  the  mountainous 
rims  east  and  west,  the  basin  is  not  a  difficult  coun- 
try for  the  railroad  builders.  A  flat  region  offers 
little  obstruction ;  while  forests,  and  latterly  iron 
mines,  close  at  hand,  supply  readily  all  necessary 
material.  The  conditions  have  encouraged  such 
building ;  it  has  been  pushed  with  characteristic 
American  energy,  the  lines  stretching  forward 
sometimes  at  the  rate  of  a  mile  or  even  two  miles 
a  day.  The  Union  Pacific  became  a  continuous 
road  to  San  Francisco  from  the  river  in  1869. 
Southern  Pacific,  Northern  Pacific,  and  Great 
Northern  have  broken  their  paths  since,  with  no 
long  intermission,  through  the  old  feeding-grounds 
of  the  buffalo  and  the  gorges  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains. Wherever  a  mountain  valley  has  possessed 
especial  fertility,  or  a  range  has  proved  to  be  rich 

1  See  pages  54-56. 


212    CLOSE  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

in  ore  beds,  or  timber  has  grown  heavily,  or  a 
waterfall  has  offered  power,  to  all  such  spots  the 
railroads  have  gone,  until  the  face  of  the  land, 
West  as  well  as  East,  is  becoming  spun  across,  as 
it  were,  with  an  immense  steel  net. 

The  Great  West  has  come  into  being  with  a 
rapidity  hitherto  unexampled  in  the  history  of 
new  lands.  In  1805,  Lewis  and  Clark,  first  of 
white  men,  saw  the  Great  Falls  of  the  Missouri, 
in  Montana.  Captain  Lewis,  seated  on  a  rock  near 
a  leap  of  the  river,  describes  a  large  cottonwood- 
tree  on  an  island  close  by,  from  among  the 
branches  of  which,  out  of  its  nest,  a  great  eagle 
soars  upward.  In  a  year  quite  recent,  another 
traveler  sat  in  the  same  place  :  the  cottonwood- 
tree  still  stood  on  the  island ;  and  as  the  trav- 
eler looked,  lo,  again  from  his  nest  among  the 
branches  a  great  eagle  soared  aloft!  It  was 
a  bird  evidently  old,  with  pinions  bruised  and 
worn.  The  visitor  conjectured  that  it  might  be 
the  veritable  eagle  of  Lewis  and  Clark.  The 
lifetime  of  a  bird  almost  spans  the  period  during 
which  all  this  vast  development  has  gone  forward ! 
Perhaps  we  have  gone  too  fast  in  the  exploita- 
tion of  our  national  domain.  Our  grandchildren 
may  wish  we  had  gone  slower.  The  locomotive 
is  the  agent  which  has  made  it  possible.  Shall 
we  look  at  it  askance  on  that  account,  —  or  with 
approval  ? 

In  other  ways  the  locomotive  seems  to  many  a 


INFLUENCE  OF  RAILROADS  213 

doubtful  blessing.  The  air  East  as  well  as  West 
is  full  of  outcry  against  the  subjection  of  whole 
States  to  the  domination  of  great  lines  that  have 
pooled  their  powers  into  vast  trusts.  By  unfair 
discrimination  in  rates,  one  set  of  communities 
will  see  their  prosperity  crushed,  perhaps  their 
very  existence  destroyed;  while  favored  points 
become  gorged  with  wealth  and  life.  In  count- 
less cases  it  is  believed  that  the  individual  is 
enslaved  or  ruined,  while  the  corporation  thrives. 
Again,  the  influence  of  railroads  is  unmistakably 
toward  the  building  up  of  great  centres,  gathering 
into  cities  population  taken  from  the  villages  and 
the  farms.  Each  census  shows,  as  the  decades 
pass,  that  the  urban  population  of  the  United 
States  is  increasing,  while  the  proportion  re- 
maining under  rural  conditions  ever  grows  smaller. 
Since  in  America  the  government  of  cities  is  the 
despair  of  good  people  generally,  it  is  naturally 
questioned  whether  the  instrumentality  mainly 
responsible  for  building  up  cities  can  rightly  be 
regarded  as  a  boon. 

If  one  by  chance  penetrates  into  intimacy  with 
some  great  railroad  official  whom  he  has  heard 
cursed  as  a  hard-hearted  unscrupulous  oppressor, 
very  likely  he  will  find  a  man  thoroughly  well- 
meaning,  perhaps  of  the  most  humane  instincts, 
most  anxious  to  do  his  duty  by  his  fellows.  Very 
likely  the  directors  of  the  road  in  general  will 
prove  to  be  men  of  similar  temper ;  and  perhaps 


214    CLOSE  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

both  president  and  directors,  who  seem  to  the 
world  to  pursue  a  selfish  and  unprincipled  policy, 
are  perplexed  at  finding  in  their  hands  power  of 
which  they  never  dreamed,  harassed  with  the  fear 
of  seeing  the  interests  committed  to  their  manage- 
ment ruined,  and  following  what  seems  to  them 
the  only  feasible  course  to  prevent  catastrophe. 
The  fact  really  is  that  our  age  is  grappling  with 
problems  which  man  has  not  yet  learned  to  solve. 
Of  such  problems  this  great  new  agency  has  been 
a  most  prolific  source.  Who  shall  say  what  is 
best  to  be  done  ?  Can  able  and  high-minded  in- 
dividuals be  found  upon  whom  such  a  weight  of 
responsibility  may  be  imposed  ?  Can  it  any  more 
safely  be  imposed  upon  great  corporations  ?  or  in 
the  end  will  it  be  necessary  for  society  to  assume 
the  burden  itself,  —  the  government  administer- 
ing the  railroads,  as  it  does  the  post-office,  thor- 
oughly in  the  interest  of  the  great  public,  which  it 
represents  ? 

The  function  of  the  historian  is  not  to  discuss 
present  problems,  but  to  record ;  and  it  is  plea- 
sant to  be  able  to  record  in  connection  with  rail- 
roads in  the  Mississippi  Valley  some  facts  which 
in  men  properly  eupeptic  and  resolute  inspire 
hope.  While  possibly  a  certain  restlessness  of 
spirit  may  be  begotten  of  the  frequent  moving  to 
and  fro  which  now  is  a  condition  of  almost  every 
man's  life,  it  is  undoubtedly  the  case  that  the 
mind  thereby  becomes  quickened  and  broadened, 


INFLUENCE  OF  RAILROADS  215 

that  prejudices  diminish,  that  knowledge  grows, 
and  that  general  harmony  is  promoted  through 
acquaintance  with  many  men  and  many  places. 
Philosophic  students  have  believed  that  the  rea- 
son why  Greece  came  forward  so  rapidly  and 
brilliantly,  while  kindred  lands  remained  in  dark- 
ness, was  because  her  territory,  deeply  indented 
by  bays,  gave  access  in  every  nook  and  corner  to 
the  sea,  in  antiquity  the  only  path  by  which  man 
could  go  forth  to  meet  man.  What  ships  did  for 
ancient  Greece,  railroads  do  for  the  modern  State, 
—  all  that,  and  more.  For  they  make  it  possible 
even  for  the  dwellers  in  the  hearts  of  continents 
to  go  forth  into  the  world,  to  receive  the  world  in 
their  own  homes,  thereby  partaking  in  the  benefi- 
cent attrition  which  so  brightens  and  humanizes. 
Again,  in  the  management  of  these  complex 
machines  and  intricate  affairs,  a  higher  type  of 
man  seems  to  be  demanded ;  and  such  a  man  will 
surely  be  evolved.  The  man  fitted  to  cope  with 
modern  life  must  be  more  patient,  temperate, 
punctual,  watchful,  judicious  than  were  his  fathers, 
who  under  their  simpler  conditions  might  with 
safety  be  slow,  careless,  and  dull.  From  the 
switchman  who,  in  his  tower,  applying  with  a 
heave  on  his  levers  compressed  air  to  the  maze  of 
shifting  rails  below  him,  thereby  shunting  from 
track  to  track  trains  bearing  millions  of  property 
or  hundreds  of  human  beings,  —  work  that  must 
be  done  with  all  swiftness  and  accuracy  or 


216    CLOSE  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

dreadful  calamities  would  result,  —  from  such 
a  switchman,  or  from  an  engine-driver,  with  his 
burden  of  responsibility,  up  to  the  chief  of  some 
great  combination  who  has  a  controlling  hand 
upon  the  mines,  the  factories,  the  shops,  the  entire 
activities  of  a  whole  group  of  States,  —  in  such 
positions,  and  they  are  coming  to  abound,  what  a 
call  there  is  for  a  type  of  man  such  as  the  world 
has  not  heretofore  seen  ! 

And  again,  though,  as  railroads  have  developed, 
there  has  often  been  uncomfortable  jarring  between 
them  and  the  communities  through  which  they 
pass,  the  great  corporation  on  the  one  hand  being 
accused  of  selfish  heartlessness,  and  the  communi- 
ties on  the  other  hand  being  accused  of  folly  and 
ingratitude,  it  is  pleasant  to  be  able  to  record  cer- 
tain signs  of  harmony  as  appearing  here  and  there. 
Such  a  token  of  coming  harmony  may  be  found, 
perhaps,  in  enterprises  undertaken  by  railroads 
of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  for  the  sake  of  educat- 
ing and  stimulating  the  populations  through  which 
they  go.1  Certain  counties  in  the  Southwest  had 
been  raising  wheat,  a  crop  in  that  region  scarcely 
profitable.  The  general  freight  agent  of  the  rail- 
road, anxious  to  build  up  the  road's  business,  and 
knowing  that  business  will  not  come  unless  the 
country  tributary  to  it  is  prosperous,  informs  him- 
self as  to  what  better  thing  can  be  done  than 

1  "Railroads  and  the  People,"  Dreiser,  Harper's  Magazine, 
vol.  100,  pp.  479,  etc. 


HARMONY  PROMOTED  217 

wheat  raising.  Taking  the  results  of  analyses  of 
soil  made  by  the  agricultural  department  in  Wash- 
ington, he  finds  the  backward  counties  are  adapted 
to  raising  tomatoes.  He  sends  out  agents  to 
towns,  hamlets,  and  cross-roads,  who  gather  to- 
gether the  farmers  and  make  plain  to  them  the 
advantages  of  tomato  raising,  and  the  best  means 
for  doing  it.  The  general  freight  agent  offers  to 
find  a  market  for  the  crop  when  it  has  been  pro- 
duced, and  to  convey  the  product  to  the  market  at 
a  rate  easy  to  the  shipper.  As  a  result,  the  coun- 
ties undertake  the  raising  of  tomatoes,  instructed 
and  helped  by  the  railroad  ;  become  well-to-do  ; 
and  enjoy  in  due  time  the  fruits  of  prosperity, 
—  a  finer,  happier,  more  abundant  life  in  every 
way.  Soon  the  railroad  meets  its  reward  in  hav- 
ing to  answer,  instead  of  the  needs  of  a  population 
feeble  and  poverty-stricken,  the  full  and  constant 
requirements  of  a  population  buoyant  and  rich 
of  resources. 

Instead  of  tomatoes,  it  may  be  that  cabbages, 
or  onions,  or  potatoes  are  the  desirable  crop. 
Whatever  it  be,  according  to  this  new  plan  the 
railroad  management,  with  its  superior  facilities 
for  finding  out  what  is  best,  arouses  and  guides 
the  activities  of  the  farmers,  helping  them  to 
knowledge  of  the  best  ways  of  exploiting  their 
farms,  ways  which  they  could  not  find  out  them- 
selves, and  then  helping  them  to  markets.  One 
road  of  the  Mississippi  Valley  has  promoted  the 


218    CLOSE   OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

wholesale  production  of  eggs  and  poultry  to  the 
enrichment  of  multitudes  along  its  line,  reaping 
meanwhile  for  itself  a  fine  revenue  out  of  the  pros- 
perity it  has  created.  Still  other  roads  have  de- 
veloped marvelously  in  their  territory  the  matter 
of  dairying,  —  instructing  their  communities  as  to 
the  best  breeds  of  cows,  the  erection  and  running 
of  creameries,  the  neat  and  profitable  ways  of 
handling  milk,  butter,  and  cheese,  —  then  making 
sure  a  fine  market  for  it  all.  All  the  time  the 
road's  own  traffic  reports  have  told  a  happy  tale, 
and  the  value  of  the  stock  has  risen  high.  In 
activity  of  this  kind  sentimental  philanthropy  is 
by  no  means  the  spring.  The  railroad  professes 
to  have  an  eye  merely  to  its  own  interest.  It  has 
discovered  that  in  working  for  the  general  good 
it  is  working  for  its  own  welfare.  On  both  sides 
the  lesson  is  being  learned  that  conflict  does  not 
pay :  that  harmony  is  the  expedient  thing.  Peace- 
ful and  pleasant  cooperation  spreads,  and  the  out- 
look for  the  future  grows  fair. 

Unmistakably,  the  influence  of  the  railroad  is 
to  build  up  great  centres,  gathering  population 
into  cities,  while  the  village  and  the  farm  are 
depleted.  The  government  of  the  city  is  a  matter 
not  as  yet  successfully  grasped  in  America,  and 
many  are  not  hopeful  about  it.  Is  the  agency 
which  perhaps  is  mainly  responsible  for  swelling 
the  size  of  cities  to  be  looked  on  as  a  blessing  ? 

Somewhere   Carlyle  speaks   of   a  seventy-four 


THE  GREAT  CITY  219 

of  the  old  time.  It  will  be  built,  he  says,  by  a 
swindling  contractor :  it  will  be  manned  by  a  crew 
taken  drunk  from  the  slums  of  seaport  towns  by 
press-gangs :  it  will  be  officered,  not  by  trained 
sailors,  who  get  their  places  through  merit,  but 
by  men  who  get  their  places  through  purchase, 
or  because  they  are  favorites  of  nobles,  or  be- 
cause they  are  ready  to  render  some  degrading 
service.  What  more  hopeless,  says  Carlyle,  than 
such  a  conjunction  !  And  yet,  somehow  or  other, 
that  ship  will  go  into  Nelson's  line  of  battle  at 
Trafalgar  and  be  a  marvel  of  effective  power. 
Somewhere  there  is  saving  grace.  So  of  the  typi- 
cal American  city ;  it  will  be  controlled,  accord- 
ing to  common  report,  by  a  corrupt  machine, 
headed  by  a  disreputable  boss  ;  charges  of  fraud 
follow  every  election,  and  a  suspicion  of  pecula- 
tion floats  about  every  branch  of  administration ; 
its  good  citizens  are  accused  of  folding  their  hands 
supinely,  while  the  ignorant  and  vicious  are 
always  out  and  at  work.  What  more  hopeless 
than  the  state  of  an  American  city !  And  yet 
there  will  not  be  found  upon  the  face  of  the  earth 
a  spot  into  which  is  gathered  more  of  sweetness 
and  light ;  for  it  will  possess  a  noble  system  of 
public  schools  scattering  knowledge  broadcast,  a 
public  library  offering  good  books  to  all,  perhaps 
a  university  of  renown,  wide  parks  full  of  the 
utmost  beauty,  churches,  hospitals,  galleries  of 
art,  institutes  for  music,  —  these  set  in  the  midst 


220    CLOSE  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

of  thousands  of  happy  and  virtuous  homes,  sus- 
taining them  and  sustained  by  them.  Most,  or 
all,  of  these  noble  things  may  be  found  in  each 
one  of  the  great  cities  of  the  Mississippi  Valley, 
—  in  New  Orleans,  St.  Louis,  St.  Paul,  and  Min- 
neapolis ;  in  Pittsburg  and  Cincinnati  to  the  east ; 
in  Kansas  City  and  Denver  to  the  west.  Some- 
where there  is  saving  grace ;  somehow  we  may  hope 
to  pull  through. 

For  the  Mississippi  Valley  the  skies  are  indeed 
clouded  in  the  ways  that  have  been  suggested, 
and  in  other  ways ;  but  in  the  case  of  everything 
that  threatens,  a  resolute  heart  will  see  some  hope 
of  meeting  the  danger.  In  some  half-dozen 
States  of  the  far  South  the  black  shadow  still 
lowers  very  ominously.  Slavery  is  destroyed,  but 
a  way  has  by  no  means  yet  been  found  through 
which  black  and  white,  two  races  in  different 
stages  of  culture,  may  live  in  peace  side  by  side. 
But  Booker  T.  Washington  is  at  work. 

The  public  schools  are  inestimably  important, 
the  main  assimilating  machinery  to  which  for  the 
most  part  we  must  trust  to  make  homogeneous 
and  intelligent  and  nobly  Americanize  the  rude, 
incongruous  masses  of  our  population.  The  pub- 
lic schools  have  enemies,  who,  if  they  should  pre- 
vail, would  truly  set  back  the  hands  on  the  dial- 
plate  of  time.  But  these  enemies  are  a  minority, 
and  American  common  sense  is  not  likely  ever  to 
suffer  them  to  come  into  control. 


SIGNS  OF  HOPE  221 

Labor  and  capital  are  often  at  war ;  and  some- 
times the  very  foundations  of  social  order  seem 
imperiled.  The  railroads,  as  has  just  been  de- 
scribed, are  working  out  a  way  of  living  in  har- 
mony with  the  communities  with  which  they  have 
to  do.  May  it  not  be  hoped  that  labor  and 
capital  will  work  out  schemes  of  adjustment? 
One  may  to-day  go  into  great  factories  and  find 
a  scene  of  beauty.1  The  great  buildings  and  the 
homes  of  the  working-people  are  embowered  in 
flowers  and  surrounded  by  lovely  lawns.  A  kin- 
dergarten for  the  children,  a  public  library  for  the 
employes,  a  fine  auditorium  for  dramas  and  music ; 
baths,  retiring-rooms,  spotless  dining-halls,  meals 
well  cooked  and  served  for  a  few  cents.  All  these 
things  are  provided  by  the  company ;  and  living 
among  and  using  these  pleasant  things  is  the 
small  army  of  working  men  and  women,  bright- 
faced,  neatly  dressed,  apparently  self-respecting 
and  contented.  The  visitor  will  be  told  that 
philanthropy  has  nothing  to  do  with  this  fine 
provision  :  it  is  made  by  the  capitalist  simply  be- 
cause it  pays  to  treat  the  work-people  well.  If 
their  minds  and  their  finer  natures  can  be  brought 
out,  their  efficiency  will  be  greater. 

In  the  suburbs  of  certain  cities  may  be  found 
industrial  villages,  where  the  shops  stand  in  gar- 
dens and  the  workmen's  cottages  dot  the  green  of  a 

1  Factory  People  and  Their  Employers :  How  Their  Eelations 
are  made  Pleasant  and  Profitable.  L.  Shuey.  1901. 


\\ 


222    CLOSE  OF  THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

charming  landscape.  Each  employe  is  a  partner 
in  the  concern,  receiving,  according  to  a  carefully 
studied  plan  of  profit-sharing,  his  due  percentage 
of  all  the  money  made.  It  is  sought  to  do  justice, 
to  promote  brotherhood ;  and  the  visitor  will  be 
told  that  it  all  pays.  With  harmony  and  justice 
as  the  basis,  prosperity  comes.  Again,  what  a 
theme  will  that  biographer  have  who  sets  out  some 
day  to  write  the  life  of  that  citizen  of  the  Missis- 
sippi Valley,  Andrew  Carnegie ! 

We  are  appalled  at  our  shortcomings,  and,  of 
course,  have  reason  to  be.  Still  it  is  worth  while 
to  remember  how  much  of  the  wrong-doing  of 
our  day  in  any  other  age  would  not  have  been 
recognized  as  wrong-doing.  Gambling,  for"  in- 
stance, is  now  under  the  severest  ban ;  but  our 
grandfathers,  if  money  were  wanted  for  a  college 
or  even  a  church,  saw  no  harm  in  raising  the 
funds  by  a  lottery.  Strong  drink  excites  horror, 
and  Kansas  grows  frantic  because  her  towns  con- 
tain grog-shops.  In  such  a  town  as  Boston,  how- 
ever, in  the  last  century,  a  leading  business  seems 
to  have  been  the  distilling  of  rum  ;  and  at  the  ordi- 
nation of  pastors,  even,  if  it  became  necessary 
when  services  were  over  to  put  the  ministerial 
council  to  bed  overcome  by  the  ordination  punch, 
no  one  thought  the  worse  of  them.  To  hold  men 
in  slavery  is  at  the  present  moment  the  very  sin 
of  sins,  to  rid  the  land  of  which  untold  sacrifices 
have  been  made  of  treasure  and  life:  but  in  a 


THE    VALLEY  ORGANIZED  223 

former  time  the  moral  sense  of  even  the  more 
scrupulous  was  quite  unvexed  though  men  were 
kidnapped  and  bought  and  sold  before  their  very 
eyes. 

The  Mississippi  Valley  organized,  —  thirty-five 
million  of  English-speaking  men,  into  whose  mass 
elements  from  all  the  better  human  breeds  are 
assimilated,  occupying  a  region  of  unexampled 
resources,  enjoying  the  blessing  of  the  ancient, 
well-ordered  Anglo-Saxon  freedom!  More  than 
twenty  commonwealths  which  are  politically  com- 
plete !  The  constitutional  frames  are  all  in  place. 
As  a  vine  expands  and  becomes  luxuriant  upon  its 
trellis,  so  the  life  of  these  millions  clings  to  and  is 
upheld  by  these  constructions,  whose  pillars,  old 
even  in  Alfred's  day,  have  been  confirmed  and 
perfected  and  enlarged  during  the  centuries  by 
liberty-loving  peoples.  Here  is,  indeed,  a  page 
of  history  which  should  possess  interest;  here, 
indeed,  are  communities  which  may  face  the  future 
with  hope. 


INDEX 


ALLOUBZ,  Father,  on  Lake  Superior, 

Alvarez  de  Pineda,  24. 
Appomattox,  Lee  at,  203. 
Arkansas  admitted  to  statehood,  209. 
Aryans,  origin   and   migrations  of, 

21 ;    they    sweep    over    America, 

22  ;  displace  Indians,  23. 

Backwoods  life,  features  of,  115. 

Barbarism,  stages  in,  6. 

Barbe-Marbois  negotiates  sale  of 
Louisiana,  123. 

Barlow,  Joel,  his  connection  with  the 
Scipto  Company,  105. 

Beaujeu  commands  against  Brad- 
dock,  53. 

Beauregard  at  Shiloh,  189. 

Benton,  Thos.  H.,  his  career,  146; 
votes  against  Nebraska  bill,  172. 

BienviUe  in  Louisiana,  44. 

Black  Hawk  War,  168. 

Blair,  Frank  P.,  at  St.  Louis  in  1861, 
184. 

Blennerhassett,  Harman,  visited  by 
Burr,  142 ;  overcome  by  him,  144. 

Blount,  of  Tennessee,  intrigues 
against  Spain,  113. 

Bonaparte,  Lucien,  makes  treaty  of 
San  Ildefonso,  119. 

Bonaparte,  Napoleon.    See  Napoleon. 

Boon,  Daniel,  his  birth,  in  western 
North  Carolina,  63;  goes  to  Ken- 
tucky, 64 ;  his  companions,  sur- 
veyor, 65;  captive  in  1777,  76; 
goes  beyond  Mississippi,  97,  129. 

Border  ruffians  in  Kansas,  174. 

Bouquet,  Henry,  his  victory  of  Bushy 
Run,  57. 

Bourginont    explores   in  Southwest, 

Brad'dock  defeated,  52. 

Bragg,  Braxton,  succeeds  Beaure- 
gard, marches  north  in  1862, 
190 ;  at  Stone  River,  191,  192 ;  at 
Chickamauga,  197,  etc. 

Brown,  John,  of  Ossawatomie,  ap- 
pears in  Kansas,  his  character, 
176,  177  ;  at  Harper's  Ferry,  180. 

Buell,  Don  Carlos,  arrives  at  Shiloh, 
189 ;  succeeded  by  Rosecrans,  190. 


Burr,  Aaron,  his  descent,  139;  his 
career,  140 ;  his  intrigues,  goes 
West,  141 ;  meets  Jackson  and  Wil- 
kinson, 142  ;  reaches  New  Orleans, 
143;  wins  Blennerhassett,  144; 
defended  by  Henry  Clay,  failure 
and  trial,  145. 

Bushy  Run,  victory  of,  57. 

Butler,  second  in  command  to  St. 
Clair,  108,  109. 

Cabildo,  in  New  Orleans,  scene  of 
cession  of  Louisiana  to  the  United 
States,  124. 

Cadillac  goes  to  Louisiana  in  1713, 
48. 

Caldwell,  John,  Scotch  Irishman,  59. 

Camp-meetings,  116. 

Carver,  Jonathan,  in  Minnesota,  73, 

Cass,  Lewis,  originates  doctrine  of 
"  squatter  sovereignty,"  172. 

Chase,  Salmon  P.,  Free-Soil  leader, 
170, 171. 

Chattanooga,  seized  by  Rosecrans, 
196  ;  battle  of,  199. 

Chekakou,  old  portage  at,  32. 

Cherokees  of  a  high  type  among 
savages,  70. 

Chickamauga,  battle  of,  197,  etc. 

Cincinnati  founded,  104. 

City,  the  American,  219. 

Claiborne,  commissioner  to  receive 
Louisiana,  124;  governor  of  Or- 
leans, 126. 

Clark,  George  Rogers,  sets  out  to 
conquer  Northwest,  80 ;  attacks 
Kaskaskia,  81,  82;  at  Cahokia  and 
Vincennes,  85;  wins  the  Indians, 
84-86 ;  expedition  against  Vin- 
cennes, 88,  etc. 

Clark,  William.  See  Lewis  and 
Clark. 

Clay,  Henry,  his  beginnings,  98  ;  de- 
fends Aaron  Burr,  145  ;  advocates 
Missouri  Compromise,  167. 

Cleburne,  Patrick,  at  Stone  River, 
191. 

Colorado  becomes  a  State,  209. 

Connecticut  resigns  her  Western 
claims,  97. 


226 


INDEX 


Constitution  adopted,  98. 

Cornstalk,  Shawnee  chief,  in  Lord 
Dunmore's  war,  71. 

Coronado,  Francesco  de,  his  march 
from  the  West,  27;  his  boldness 
and  misfortunes,  28. 

Cortez  in  Mexico,  24. 

Cotton-gin,  its  effect  on  slavery,  159. 

Crozat,  his  monopoly  in  Louisiana, 
1717,  48. 

Curtis,  B.  R.,  and  the  Dred  Scott 
decision,  179. 

Custer  defeated  and  shun  by  In- 
dians, 210. 

Cutler,  Manasseh,  and  Ohio  Com- 
pany, 100;  encounters  Francois 
Vigo,  104. 

Cuyahoga,  old  portage  from,  to  Mus- 
kincruiii.  33* 

Davis,  Jefferson,  his  influence  hi 
Washington,  180. 

Douglas,  Stephen  A.,  reports  on  Ne- 
braska, 168 ;  enunciates  "  squatter 
sovereignty,"  169 ;  introduces  Ne- 
braska bill,  170;  struggles  with 
opposition,  171 ;  his  victory,  172  ; 
confronted  by  Abraham  Lincoln, 
173 ;  the  great  debate,  181. 

Dred  Scott  decision,  178,  etc. 

Dunmore,  Lord,  governor  of  Vir- 
ginia, 69;  his  war  with  the  In- 
dians, 70,  71. 

Du  Tisiio  explores  in  Southwest,  44. 

Eads,  James  B.,  builds  the  St.  Louis 
bridge,  206  ;  constructs  the  jetties 
at  the  Passes,  207. 

Education,  early  condition  of,  156. 

English,  advance  of  Thirteen  Colo- 
nies into  Mississippi  Valley,  51, 
etc. ;  Clark  attacked  from  Detroit, 
87  ;  attack  New  Orleans,  149,  etc. 

Estevanico,  first  negro,  25 ;  his  ad- 
ventures in  New  Mexico,  26;  in 
Zuiii  traditions,  27. 

Farragut,  David  Glasgow,  at  New 
Orleans  and  Vicksburg,  190;  at 
Port  Hudson,  195. 

Federalists,  talk  disunion,  118, 123. 

Filles  &  la  cassette,  wives  of  pio- 
neers, 49. 

Flatboats,  95,  155. 

Florida,  De  Soto  lands  in,  28. 

Fort  Chartres,  established,  50;  sur- 
rendered, 53,  78. 

Fort  Donelson  captured  by  Grant, 
187. 

Fort  Duquesne  established,  captured, 
52. 

Fort  Henry  captured  by  Grant,  186. 

Franklin,  State  of,  96. 


Franklin,  battle  of,  201. 

Fremont  in  Missouri,  1861,  184. 

French,  enter  America,  character  of 
their  colonization,  31 ;  in  Missis- 
sippi Valley  middle  of  18th  cen- 
tury, 45  ;  characteristics  of  their 
life,  46  ;  their  polity,  tendency  to 
roam  and  fall  into  savagery,  47  ; 
power  in  Mississippi  Valley  extin- 
guished, 53;  numbers  in  Illinois 
Country,  condition,  7,9  ;  Louisiana 
recovered  and  sold  by,  to  United 
States,  119,  etc. 

Frontenac,  governor  of  Canada,  36. 

Frontiersman,  his  character,  desper- 
ate nature  of  his  task,  56 ;  his  ap- 
pearance and  life,  60,  61,  62 ;  title 
to  lands  hi  the  Valley,  66;  his 
home,  115. 

Gallipolis  swindle,  105, 106. 

Galvez,  campaigns  against  British, 
95. 

German  immigration,  168. 

Gibault,  Father,  priest  at  Easkaskia, 
82 ;  helps  Clark  at  Vincennes,  83. 

Grant,  Ulysses  S.,  his  beginning,  185 ; 
his  early  career,  at  Paducah  and 
Belmont,  186 ;  captures  Fort  Henry 
and  Fort  Donelson,  187 ;  at  Shiloh, 
188, 189 ;  captures  Vicksburg,  192, 
etc.;  at  Missionary  Ridge,  199;  in 
Virginia,  203. 

Green  Bay,  old  portage,  32. 

Groseilliers  on  the  Mississippi,  1654, 
34. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  slain  by  Aaron 
Burr,  140. 

Hamilton,  Henry,  British  commander 
at  Detroit,  75  ;  campaigns  against 
Clark,  87,  88;  captured  at  Vin- 
cennes, 92. 

Harmar  as  Indian  fighter,  107,  108. 

Harrison,  W.  H.,  first  governor  of 
Indiana,  113. 

Helm,  Leonard,  commands  at  Vin- 
cennes, 1778,  84 ;  captured  by  Brit- 
ish, 88  ;  captures  a  reinforcement, 
92. 

Henderson,  land  speculator,  72. 

Hennepin,  Father,  companion  of  La 
Salle,  captured  by  Sioux,  41 ;  wan- 
ders in  Minnesota,  bis  books,  his 
lying,  42. 

Hood,  J.  B.,  at  Chickamauga,  198; 
succeeds  J.  E.  Johnston,  200 ;  re- 
pulsed at  Franklin,  201 ;  routed  at 
Nashville,  202. 

Iberville  in  Louisiana,  43. 
Illinois  admitted  as  a  State,  158. 
Immigration,   picturesque    features, 


INDEX 


227 


153 ;  not  necessarily  hurtful  even 
when  large,  210. 

Indiana,  Territory  of,  W.  H.  Harri- 
son, governor,  113 ;  admitted  as  a 
State,  158. 

Indians,  their  probable  origin  and 
general  condition  at  the  coming  of 
the  whites,  5,  etc.  ;  sparseness  of 
occupation,  19  ;  displaced  by  Ar- 
yans, 23;  Roosevelt  on  their  dis- 
possession, 54 ;  numbers  not  dimin- 
ished, sentimentalism  about  them, 
55 ;  in  Lord  Dunmore's  war,  71 ; 
in  Revolutionary  War,  76;  dealt 
with  by  George  Rogers  Clark,  84, 
etc. ;  barbarities  of,  about  1787, 
106, 107 ;  they  defeat  Ouster,  210. 

Iowa  admitted  as  a  State,  209. 

Iroquois,  "  long  house  "  of,  9 ;  de- 
stroy the  Illinois,  38 ;  their  ferocity 
east  and  west,  54. 

Island  No.  10  captured,  189. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  his  beginnings, 
98 ;  in  Congress,  112 ;  fascinated 
by  Aaron  Burr,  142  ;  his  character, 
147 ;  his  strength  and  weakness, 
148;  at  New  Orleans,  150;  his 
army,  151 ;  his  victory,  152. 

Jay's  treaty  fixes  northern  boundary, 
112. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  author  of  Ken- 
tucky Resolutions,  1798,  118;  in 
the  Louisiana  purchase,  122 ;  sends 
out  Lewis  and  Clark,  127. 

Jesuits,  their  work  and  records, 
19. 

Jetties  built  by  Eads  at  river  mouth, 
207. 

Johnston,  Albert  Sidney,  commands 
Confederates  at  Shiloh,  187;  hia 
death,  188. 

Johnston,  Joseph  E.,  at  Jackson, 
193 ;  succeeded  by  Hood,  200. 

Joliet,  Louis,  companion  of  Mar- 
quette,  34. 

Juchereau  explores  in  Southwest, 
44. 

Kansas,  set  off  from  Nebraska,  170  ; 
troubles  begin,  174 ;  Reeder's  gov- 
ernorship, 175;  John  Brown  ap- 
pears in,  176 ;  admitted  as  a  State, 
181. 

Kaskaskia,  founded  on  Wabash,  46 ; 
captured  by  Clark,  81,  etc. 

Kenton,  Simon,  companion  of  Boon, 
65  ;  adventures  of,  77. 

Kentucky,  visited  by  Boon,  64 ;  settle- 
ment of,  72;  admitted  to  state- 
hood, 112. 

King's  Mountain,  battle  of,  1780, 
won  by  frontiersmen,  94. 


Labor  and  Capital,  their  strife  amel- 
iorated, 221,  222. 

Lafitte,  Jean  and  Pierre,  Barataria 
pirates,  151. 

La  Harpe  explores  in  Southwest, 
44. 

La  Salle,  Sieur  de,  comes  to  America, 
35  ;  discovers  the  Ohio,  builds  the 
Griffin  on  Lake  Erie,  36 ;  reaches 
Illinois,  misfortunes,  37  ;  witnesses 
Iroquois  ravages,  38;  goes  down 
Mississippi,  founds  Louisiana,  sails 
for  France,  39  ;  wrecked  and  mur- 
dered, 40. 

Laussat,  prefect  in  Louisiana,  1803, 
120. 

La  Verendrye,  father  and  sons,  in 
Northwest,  discover  Rocky  Moun- 
tains, 44,  45. 

Law  rudely  administered  at  first, 
157. 

Law,  John,  and  the  Mississippi 
Bubble,  48. 

Le  Clerc,  death  of,  in  San  Domingo, 
120. 

Lecompton  Constitution  in  Kansas 
struggle,  181. 

Lee,  Robert  E.,  overwhelmed  hi  1865, 
203. 

Le  Sueur  ascends  Mississippi,  44. 

Lewis  and  Clark  sent  out  by  Jeffer* 
son  to  explore  Louisiana,  128,  etc. 

Lexington,  Kentucky,  founded,  74. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  his  father  rescued 
from  death,  99 ;  debates  with 
Douglas,  181;  President  of  the 
United  States,  182. 

Little  Turtle,  Miami  chief,  defeats  St 
Clair,  110. 

Livingston,  Robert  R.,  and  the  Lou- 
isiana purchase,  122. 

Locomotive,  creator  of  the  Great 
West,  211 ;  its  work,  212,  etc. 

Longstreet,  James,  at  Chickamauga, 
197,  198. 

Louisiana,  named  by  La  Salle,  39  ; 
indefinite  boundaries,  condition  in 
18th  century,  48;  helped  by 
Mississippi  Bubble,  49  ;  population 
hi  1750, 50  ;  ceded  to  Spain,  53, 78 ; 
retroceded  to  France  and  sold  to 
United  States,  119,  etc.;  ill  at 
ease  under  new  regime,  126  ;  ad- 
mitted to  the  Union,  158. 

Lynch  law,  63. 

Lyon,  Nathaniel,  at  St.  Louis,  1861, 
his  death  at  Wilson's  Creek,  184. 

Madison,  author  of  Virginia  Resolu- 
tions, 118 ;  in  the  Louisiana  pur- 
chase, 122. 

Maize  perhaps  exercises  a  retarding 
influence,  8. 


INDEX 


Mallet  brothers  explore  in  South- 
west, 44. 

Mandans,  Lewis  and  Clark  among, 
130. 

Marcos  de  Nizza,  Fray,  25. 

Marietta  founded,  103. 

Marquette,  Jacques,  on  Mississippi, 
1G73,  34. 

Maryland,  her  action  as  regards 
Western  claims,  97. 

Massachusetts  resigns  her  Western 
claims,  97. 

Maumee,  old  portage  to  the  Wabash, 
32. 

Mexican  war,  168. 

Minnesota,  Hennepin  in,  42  ;  visit  of 
Jonathan  Carver,  73,  74  ;  visit  of 
Pike,  135;  admitted  as  a  State, 
209. 

Missionary  Ridge,  battle  of,  199, 
etc. 

Mississippi  River,  in  geologic  times, 
1 ;  its  present  physical  character, 
its  lower  course,  2;  its  upper 
course,  3  ;  blocked  by  Spain,  113, 
119 ;  steam-navigation  on,  154 ; 
operations  in  civil  war,  190,  etc.  ; 
a  difficult  problem  for  engineers, 
204. 

Mississippi,  Territory  becomes  a 
State,  158. 

Mississippi  Valley,  its  area,  3 ;  re- 
sources, comparison  with  other 
river  basins,  4 ;  primitive  popula- 
tion, 5,  etc. ;  scarcely  disturbed 
middle  of  18th  century,  51 ;  An- 
glo-Saxon advance  into,  52,  etc. ; 
becomes  part  of  the  United  States, 
75,  etc.  ;  western  half  acquired 
by  Louisiana  purchase,  explored 
by  Lewis  and  Clark,  128,  etc.; 
by  Pike,  134,  etc.  ;  endangered  by 
Aaron  Burr,  140,  etc. ;  attacked  by 
the  English,  149,  etc. ;  struggle 
over  slavery  in,  165,  etc.  ;  civil 
war  in,  183,  etc. ;  its  vast  re- 
sources, 208 ;  its  rapid  develop- 
ment, 209 ;  as  affected  by  the  lo- 
comotive, 211 ;  present  condition 
and  prospects  under  organization, 
223. 

Missouri,  its  extent  as  Territory,  164 ; 
admitted  as  a  State,  166 ;  how  held 
to  the  Union  in  1861,  184. 

Missouri  Compromise,  165,  166. 

Monroe,  James,  ambassador  to 
France,  1803,  123. 

Montana  becomes  a  State,  209. 

Moral  standard,  elevation  of,  222. 

Mormons  at  Nauvpo,  Illinois,  167. 

Moscoso,  Don  Luis  de,  successor  of 
de  Soto,  30. 

Mound-building,  13. 


Napoleon  Bonaparte,  recovers  Lou- 
isiana from  Spain,  119;  plans  to 
restore  colonial  empire,  reasons 
why  he  could  not  do  so,  120 ;  de- 
termines to  sell  Louisiana  to  the 
Americans,  121 ;  sale  completed, 
123. 

Nashville,  founded,  95;  battle  of, 
202. 

Nebraska,  extent  as  Territory,  169; 
becomes  a  State,  209. 

Nebraska  bill,  struggle  over,  170,  etc. 

New  Orleans,  founded,  46;  its  ap- 
pearance in  1803,  125,  126;  at- 
tacked by  British  in  18]  5,  150; 
Jackson's  defense,  151 ;  his  victory, 
152,  153. 

New  West,  its  rapid  development, 
208. 

New  York  resigns  her  Western 
claims,  97. 

Nicolet,  Jean,  at  Green  Bay  in  1634, 
33. 

North  Carolina,  settlers  go  out  from, 
59  ;  resigns  her  Western  claims,  98. 

North  Dakota  becomes  a  State,  209. 

Northwest,  conquered  by  Clark,  80, 
etc.  ;  injured  by  bad  management 
of  public  lands,  first  settled  from 
the  South,  114. 

Northwest  Ordinance,  98  ;  provisions 
of,  101, 102. 

Ohio,  Territory,  St.  Clair  governor 
of,  104 ;  becomes  a  State,  1802, 127. 

Ohio  Company,  formation  of,  100. 

Oklahoma  ready  for  statehood,  209. 

Owen,  Robert  Dale,  founds  commu- 
nity at  New  Harmony,  Indiana,  167. 

Pakenham,  Sir  Edward,  leads  force 
against  New  Orleans,  149  ;  his  ar- 
rival, 150;  his  overthrow,  152, 
153. 

Panfilo  de  Narvaez,  24. 

Pea  Ridge,  battle  of,  184. 

Pemberton,  defeated  at  Vicksburg, 
194. 

Pierce,  Franklin,  signs  Nebraska 
bill,  173 ;  his  pro-slavery  tenden- 
cies, 175. 

Pike,  Lieut.  Z.  M.,  his  expedition 
North  in  180,6134 ;  expedition  West 
in  1806, 135 ;  discovers  Pike's  Peak, 
hardships,  136;  his  return  and 
death,  137. 

Pinckney's  treaty  establishes  south- 
ern boundary,  112. 

Pittsburg  Landing,  battle  of,  187,  etc. 

Pleasant  Point,  battle  of,  71. 

Pontiac,  his  career  and  death,  57. 

Portages,  old  waterways  into  wilder- 
ness, 32. 


INDEX 


229 


Port  Hudson,  naval  battle  at,  195 ; 

siege  and  capture  of,  196. 
Presqu'   Isle,   old  portage   to  Alle- 

ghany,  33. 
Putnam,  Rufus,  and  Ohio  Company, 

100. 

Quebec,  captured,  53. 

Radisson  on  the  Mississippi  in  1654, 
34. 

Railroads,  their  powerful  influence, 
213 ;  problems  of  management, 
214  ;  beneficent  action  of,  215,  etc. 

Reeder,  Edwin,  governor  of  Kansas, 
175. 

Religion,  early  condition  of,  116, 156. 

Rule,  the  frontiersman's,  60. 

Robertson,  James,  on  the  Watauga, 
68 ;  settles  Tennessee,  71,  95 ;  has 
Spanish  sympathies,  97. 

Rocheblave  commands  for  British  at 
Kaskaskia,  81. 

Roosevelt,  N.  J.,  pioneer  of  steam- 
navigation  on  Mississippi,  154. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  on  disposses- 
sion of  the  Indians,  54. 

Rosecrans,  W.  S.,  succeeds  Buell, 
190;  at  Stone  River,  191,  etc.; 
captures  Chattanooga,  196;  at 
Chickamauga,  197,  etc. 

Sacajawea,  Shoshone  squaw  with 
Lewis  and  Clark,  131. 

St.  Clair,  General  Arthur,  governor 
of  Ohio,  104 ;  his  expedition  and 
defeat,  108,  etc. 

Ste.  Genevieve,  settlement  of,  78. 

St.  Iguace,  home  of  Marquette,  34, 
35. 

St.  Joseph,  old  portage,  32. 

St.  Louis,  founded  by  Laclede,  1764, 
78;  starting-point  of  Lewis  and 
Clark,  128  ;  of  Pike,  134  ;  hi  1861, 
184  ;  Eads  bridge  at,  206. 

San  Domingo,  failure  of  French  in, 
120. 

Savagery,  stages  in,  6. 

Schofield  defeats  Hood  at  Franklin, 
201. 

Schools,  public,  16th  section  in  each 
township  set  off  for,  103 ;  their 
existence  threatened,  220. 

Scotch  Irish,  their  origin,  immigra- 
tion to  America,  58;  their  char- 
acter, love  of  freedom,  in  western 
North  Carolina,  59. 

Separatist  feeling,  97,  118. 

Sevier,  John,  his  origin  and  char- 
acter, 68  ;  at  King's  Mountain,  94 ; 
governor  of  Tennessee,  112. 

Sheridan,  Philip  H.,  at  Stone  River, 
191 ;  at  Chickamauga,  198. 


Sherman,  W.  T.,  his  beginning,  185  ; 
at  Shiloh,  188  ;  defeated  at  Chick- 
asaw  Bayou,  192;  at  Vicksburg, 
194;  at  Missionary  Ridge,  199; 
marches  to  the  sea,  200. 

Shiloh,  battle  of,  187,  etc. 

Sioux,  capture  Hennepin,  41 ;  their 
ferocity,  55. 

Slavery,  prohibited  in  Northwest 
through  Southern  men,  100  ;  its 
antiquity  and  persistency,  161 ; 
tends  to  die  out  at  end  of  18th 
century,  162;  revived  by  cotton- 
gin,  163 ;  its  legacy  of  trouble,  220. 

Soto,  Fernando  de,  lands  in  Florida, 
28 ;  fights  Indians,  reaches  Missis- 
sippi, dies,  29. 

South  Carolina  resigns  her  Western 
claims,  97. 

South  Dakota  becomes  a  State,  209. 

Spaniards,  come  to  Mississippi  Valley, 
24;  Spanish  system  promotes  sur- 
vival of  unfittest,  30;  protest 
against  French  settlement  of  Lou- 
isiana in  1699,  43 ;  Louisiana  ceded 
to,  by  French,  78 ;  retroceded,  119. 

Steam-navigation  introduced  on  Mis- 
sissippi, 154. 

Stone  River,  battle  of,  191, 192. 

Taney,  R.  B.,  and  the  Dred  Scott 
decision,  179. 

Tecumseh  at  Tippecanoe,  146. 

Tennessee,  settled,  67 ;  admitted  to 
statehood,  112. 

Tennessee  River,  its  source  and 
course,  66. 

Thayer,  Eli,  founds  Emigrant  Aid 
Society,  174. 

Thomas,  George  H.,  at  Stone  River, 
191 ;  at  Chickamauga,  198 ;  at 
Missionary  Ridge,  199;  at  Nash- 
ville, 202. 

Tonti,  lieutenant  of  La  Salle,  37; 
commands  in  the  Illinois,  39 ;  dies 
of  yellow  fever,  49. 

Topeka  Constitution,  175. 

Toussaint  1'Ouverture  thwarts  Na- 
poleon in  San  Domingo,  120. 

Transylvania,  organized,  73. 

United  States,  foundation  of,  career 
of,  75. 

Van  Dorn  fortifies  Vicksburg,  190. 

Vicksburg,  fortified,  190 ;  attacked, 
192,  etc.  ;  captured,  194. 

Victor  named  to  command  in  Louisi- 
ana by  Napoleon,  120. 

Vigo,  Francois,  helps  Clark  against 
Vincennes,  88 ;  encounters  Ma- 
nasseh  Cutler,  104. 

Vincennes,  founded  on  Wabash,  46  ; 


230 


INDEX 


won  by  Gibault,  83;  captured  by 
Clark,  89,  etc. 
Virginia  resigns  her  Western  claims, 

Wabash,  Clark  in  the  drowned  lands 
of,  89,  etc. 

Walker  penetrates  Mississippi  Val- 
ley, 1748,  51. 

Wallace,  Lew,  at  Donelson,  187. 

Washington,  on  headwaters  of  Alle- 
ghany,  as  a  pioneer,  becomes  a  sol- 
dier, 52 ;  as  surveyor,  65. 

Watauga  Association,  68;  constitu- 


Wayne,  his  expedition  and  victory 
over  the  Indians,  111. 

West  Virginia  admitted  as  a  State, 
209. 

Whitney,  Eli,  invents  cotton-gin,  115. 

Wilkinson,  James,  commissioner  to 
receive  Louisiana  in  1803, 124  ;  dis- 
patches Pike  northward,  134; 
westward,  135  ;  becomes  involved 
with  Aaron  Burr,  142;  his  career 
and  character,  143  ;  betrays  Burr, 
145  ;  his  disgrace,  146. 

Wilson's  Creek,  battle  of,  184. 

Wisconsin,  admitted  as  State,  209. 

Wyoming  becomes  a  State,  209. 


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